Chiming In on Phil Kessel

As everyone's already told you, Philip Joseph Kessel, Jr. is now a Toronto Maple Leaf, with the Boston Bruins receiving the Leafs' first- and second-round draft picks in 2010 and their first-rounder in 2011 as a fee.  And there are a whole lot of people out there who believe that Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli made off like a bandit, while Leafs GM Brian Burke got hosed.  Well, I don't think that's true, and here's why. 

On Maple Leafs Hot Stove, Alex Tran wrote a well-thought-out piece on the value of a high first-round draft pick, and why Kessel is more valuable than two of them.  Now, I do disagree with parts of his logic - he reasons that there is roughly a 5% chance of taking two players better than Kessel with two top-ten draft picks, but I don't think you would necessarily need two better players, as long as you get two very good players (ie. top-6 forwards) to make it worthwhile.  But his point is well taken, and I was impressed by the time he spent devising his formula.

The key thing to remember, though, is that the picks Alex uses as examples are top-ten draft picks.  In the last two years, Toronto has made two such selections: Luke Schenn (#5 in 2008) and Nazem Kadri (#7 in 2009).  But what are the chances that Toronto selects in the top ten this year?  If they make the playoffs, they won't even go in the top 14.  Now, serviceable players are certainly still selected that late in the first round, but other than late-round diamonds in the rough, the game-breakers are gone by that point.  And Phil Kessel - a #5 pick himself - is a game breaker.  Leafs fans can look at it this way: if Toronto had owned 14th and 16th picks in the 2008 draft, and had the opportunity to deal them (along with your second-rounder) and get Luke Schenn at #5 in return, would you do it?  I'm sure you would.  That's essentially what happened here, although the draft picks are spread across two years.

Does that mean I think that Chiarelli lost this deal?  Not at all.  As has been well-documented, there was no way Kessel was returning to Boston, and the Bruins GM was already in a tough position, with salary cap issues to think about; matching an offer sheet would have been nothing but trouble, and he couldn't have traded Kessel for a year afterwards (as per the CBA).  Instead, Chiarelli translated a player who wasn't coming back into three very high draft picks, which also allowed him to avoid any cap headaches.

I think this trade was good for both teams involved.  And sure, there's nothing hip or edgy about being agreeable on the Internet; as everyone knows, the Internet was invented by ARPA in the 1960s to allow people to ignore common decency and verbally bludgeon each other on a daily basis.  But come on, can't we just all be winners?  Because the Bruins, the Leafs and Phil Kessel all are.