Window Of Opportunity For Pittsburgh Penguins Hinges On Phil Kessel Trade

Phil Kessel broke a maddening shutout streak for the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday night. In fact, his play in general turned out to be the only redeeming quality of their first road trip of the 2015-16 season, except for some yeoman’s work by Marc-Andre Fleury that made a 2-1 loss to the Arizona Coyotes negligibly less embarrassing for one of the most loaded offenses in the NHL.

This puts Kessel on pace for a 40-goal campaign — or 41, if you wish to split hairs. The Penguins, not a team known for living up to wishful preseason thinking, would love to see all the talk of a career year for Kessel come to fruition. Even if they get just a fraction of that return on investment in this bearish market for offense in pro hockey, it would be a victory for a franchise clinging tenaciously to its win-now approach — and a franchise in a must-win-now situation.

During its last Stanley Cup run, defenseman Rob Scuderi, today the same easy target in Pittsburgh as Kessel was in Toronto, was lightheartedly, but with some sincerity, referred to as “The Piece.” The Pens need Kessel to be “The Piece” if they want to be taken seriously again.

They entered the summer not only with a porous, unproven defense, but with an offense lacking depth, lacking the right amount of production from stars and special teams alike, and lacking good draft classes to make the future more livable. GM Jim Rutherford worked very hard to cut a very reasonable deal for Kessel, whose strengths, presumably, could offset all but one of those weaknesses. After showing good chemistry with Sidney Crosby in the preseason and displaying his speed and skill in just two regular season games as a Penguin, Kessel is making it easy to believe the Canadian press was flat wrong about him.

Crosby didn’t always need superstar wingers to succeed. He won a Cup skating with the likes of Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin, and, occasionally, Miroslav Satan. For Pittsburgh’s sake, let’s hope Kessel does a little more justice to that distinctive No. 81 sweater, because the Penguins need their captain to do more. Making Crosby’s line harder to defend by putting Kessel on it should make him want to do more.

For all the unsolved problems they’ve had on the back end and bottom six, the other 29 teams in the league would love to be as top-heavy as the Penguins are this season. Despite these times in which even elite players are forced to work harder and harder for less and less, the list of excuses for the Pens not to outgun the competition and blaze a postseason trail at least longer than one round is all but nonexistent now.

There’s no reason for Crosby not to be more dominant and more engaged on a nightly basis, and Kessel, if nothing else, can lead by his example, which is refreshingly less deliberate and pass-happy.

There’s no reason for the power play to be so confounding, especially if Mike Johnston puts all his eggs in one basket and lets Evgeni Malkin skate on the top unit — which is the way it should be, if Johnston wishes to put his power play in the best position for the quickest success.

There’s no reason this Penguins offense shouldn’t at least be lucking its way into more than one Kessel beauty in two games, even if they’re just two out of 82.

There’s no reason for one of the most hyped teams of the offseason to be allergic to expectations again.

Kessel, like Crosby and Malkin, is an in-his-prime star here for the long haul. He’s here at the expense of a top prospect in an already barren farm system and draft picks with which there’s no telling what Kessel’s old team can do. The Penguins have frittered away enough of those already to field loaded teams that came away empty-handed. Without Kessel being a spark plug for this previously underachieving club, which is already missing two important depth guys in Pascal Dupuis and Eric Fehr, the Pens are in trouble in the short haul.

The closer the Three-Headed Monster gets to the wrong side of 30 without tangible, NHL-ready talent on the farm to mitigate Rutherford’s calculated risk, the more they’re in trouble in the long haul.

Matt Popchock is the Pittsburgh Penguins beat writer for RantSports. Follow him on Twitter @mpopchock.