Was the Kessel Trade Really That Lopsided?

In early February, the New England Sports Network (NESN) held a poll: what was the best trade in Boston sports history? Well, here are the results:

The infamous Kessel trade wiped the floor with the other choices, accruing nearly half of the votes. The fans have spoken and decided that this was the best trade in Boston sports history. Brian Burke, Toronto’s GM who pulled the trigger on the trade, admitted that the Bruins and Peter Chiarelli won the trade.

After Kessel scored a dagger of a goal in game two of the Bruins-Leafs playoff series, the trade has once again found its way into the consciousness of both fanbases. But were the Bruins really such a clear winner?

Chubbiness aside, Phil Kessel is one of the top offensive playmakers in the NHL right now. His 52 points in this shortened season place him in a tie for the seventh most productive player in the league, sitting in the top 15 in both goals and assists. He improved his point-per-game pace from his breakout 2011-12 campaign when he was sixth in the NHL in points. He has scored more goals than any Bruin for five years running and no player wearing the spoked B has tallied more assists for two years.

Kessel is undoubtedly an extremely productive and talented forward. One may point out his anemic plus-minus, which has been below zero ever since he went to Toronto, (and compare it to Seguin’s impressive +53) but that stat is always misleading. Kessel is not going to win the Selke, but he is not a career -36 player – not to mention that his plus-minus is helped quite a bit by that +23 in his last season in Boston.

How often does a 22 year old sniper, coming off a 60 point campaign, become available? It is even more rare to get such a young producer without giving up any immediate talent.

But that is what Toronto did. They got Kessel for two first rounders and one second. Luckily (or maybe it wasn’t so much luck as shrewdness from Chiarelli), those firsts ended up being pretty early: the second pick in 2010 and the ninth in 2011. Those picks became Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton, respectively, and the Bruins nabbed Jared Knight with the second rounder.

With those players combining for a total of 245 NHL games, less than half of Kessel’s experience, it’s more than a little bit early to evaluate the trade, let alone declare it the greatest in the long history of Boston sports.

And on that note, this trade was better than the trade for McHale and Parish? And 20.91 percent better! Ridiculous. The Celtics got two-thirds of the Big Three for the first and 13^th picks of the 1980 NBA Draft. In the end, the trade turned out to be center Joe Barry Carroll and Rickey Brown, who played a grand total of 340 NBA games. This trade was far and away better than the Kessel trade. McHale and Parish played for the Celtics for a combined 27 seasons and won three Larry O’Brien trophies.

Yes, Tyler Seguin won the Stanley Cup with the Bruins, but that was more correlation that cause.

It is far too early to evaluate the trade. Through Kessel’s first 203 games, he had 54 goals and 110 points. Seguin narrowly beats that out with 56 and 121. Dougie Hamilton played well in his first NHL campaign, showing flashes of talent, but the expected growing pains as well. The trade is off to a very promising start for the Bruins even without Knight yet joining the team.

But Kessel is the oldest player involved in the trade at just 25 years old. It will be some time before this trade can be fairly evaluated. But right now, it is not even a clear win for the Bruins, let alone the best in Boston history.

To vote for it over the McHale-Parish trade and the Varitek-Lowe robbery is just ludicrous. You can still hear me chanting "Thank you, Kessel" with the rest of the Bruins fans, though.