The National Hockey League selected 36 players and six rookies on Saturday for 2015 All-Star Game in Columbus on January 25 and Phil Kessel was the only member of the Toronto Maple Leafs to be selected for the weekend of fun and frivolity.
The 27-year-old Kessel leads the Maple Leafs with 43 points(19 goals, 24 assists) and will be part of the All-Star Fantasy Draft on Friday, Jan. 23, that will split up the 42 players into two squads.
Hopefully Washington’s Alex Ovechkin will not have to incur the charges on his cell plan for taking and sending out photos of Kessel being the last player picked in the draft, as he was four years ago.
The Maple Leafs uncharacteristically had both Saturday and Sunday off this weekend, as they make their way to California for the first three games of a difficult four-game road swing in six nights.
Toronto opens against the Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center on Monday, has back-to-back games in Anaheim on Wednesday and San Jose on Thursday before finishing up in St. Louis on Saturday.
Although interim coach Peter Horachek has changed things up from former coach Randy Carlyle, it is likely that Jonathan Bernier will get the start against his former team on Monday and split the back-to-back games with James Reimer.
*******
In his Sunday column in the Boston Globe, Fluto Shinzawa touches on the Kessel situation and indicates that the crux of Toronto’s problem is not the star forward but the fact that GM Dave Nonis has not been successful in building enough of a support structure around him to accentuate his positives as a consistent top scorer in the league.
Kessel has scored 30 goals or more in every full NHL season since 2009 and would be the first Leafs player to finish in the top 10 of NHL scoring four years in a row since Hall-of-Famer Harvey “Busher… Jackson did in the mid 1930’s, but he does not have the personality or interest to be part of Toronto’s leadership group.
It is believed that there is significant heat on Nonis after the extensions to Kessel, team captain Dion Phaneuf, defenseman Jake Gardiner and the free agent signing of David Clarkson and that Toronto will be looking to make roster moves prior to the March 2nd trade deadline, but that they cannot afford to move young assets like Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly, Gardiner and James van Riemsdyk.
Shinzawa hints that ex-New Jersey Devils coach Peter DeBoer and former Jack Adams winner Paul Maclean could be candidates for the Leafs coaching job when the club conducts a search this summer, but also mentions Bruins coach Claude Julien as a possibility.
The 2011 Stanley Cup winning head coach has been with Boston since 2007 and signed a multi-year contract extension in 2012, but recent critical comments from new CEO Charlie Jacobs and the Bruins underachieving this season have raised the possibility that the clock may be ticking on Julien.
*******
The Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch believes that there would be plenty of suitors for Kessel or Phaneuf if the Maple Leafs wanted to move them, but their large cap hits would be nearly impossible to fit in on a contending team’s salary cap during the season.
Moving either player would be more manageable after the season, with the expected increase of the salary cap and teams having more freedom to move pieces around. Talk amongst sources in the league indicate that either Kessel or Phaneuf will not be in Toronto by next season.
*******If you are interested in sponsorship or advertising your business in the Greater Toronto / Southern Ontario area on this column, please send a message for more information by clicking on the “Contact… button at the top of the page.*******
For Those on Twitter: Follow @mikeinbuffalo
KINDLE USERS: Please sign up for Maple Leafs Buzz, which includes a free-of-charge 14-day trial and is just 99 cents per month afterwards. For more information click here.