TORONTO – Phil Kessel isn’t just back at Air Canada Centre for the biggest game the Toronto Maple Leafs have played since he was a member of the team.
Phil Kessel is also due.
The Pittsburgh Penguins winger carries a 10-game goal drought into Saturday’s encounter, but he’s shown signs of coming out of the cold patch. He had eight shots against Columbus earlier this week, and 30 total over the 10 games, which suggests that it’s only a matter of time before one goes in.
Given that the Leafs need a victory to qualify for the playoffs, the timing would be perfect for Kessel if it happens on Saturday.
He’s still looking for his first point against the Leafs since the July 2015 trade that sent him to Pittsburgh. He has no points in the five games against Toronto since.
That streak won’t last forever, either.
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Penguins coach Mike Sullivan is planning to rest some of his starters, but Kessel and Sidney Crosby aren’t among them. They’ll be counted on to generate offence in a lineup that looks nothing like the one that won the Stanley Cup in San Jose last June.
“(Toronto), there’s a lot to play for still,” said Sullivan. “There’ll be intensity, there’ll be an emotion in the building. It’ll be a fun environment, I think, for our guys to play in. We expect a real competitive game.”
Kessel was the victim of a practical joke by teammates here on Friday and seemed to be enjoying himself during Saturday’s morning skate. He didn’t speak with reporters afterwards.
While the trade to the Penguins has worked out spectacularly for him, few seem to have forgotten his turbulent tenure with the Leafs. When Pittsburgh played here last season, goalie Jeff Zatkoff spliced together clips of Kessel’s scrapes with the media and showed them on the bus in from the airport.
Kessel continues to count a few of the current Leafs as friends, and brought the Stanley Cup to the Hospital for Sick Children here last summer, but would no doubt relish the opportunity to help spoil the party for them.
Tensions are running high in Toronto with the team having dropped consecutive games to Washington and Tampa by a 4-1 score. The Leafs need only two points to lock up a playoff spot.
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“I think you should win your way in,” said coach Mike Babcock. “I think you earn the right to be in there. I think if you do a good job, you people, you get to cover the Stanley Cup playoffs, right? So if we do a good job we get to be in it.
“If we don’t, we don’t get to be in it and I think you should win your way in.”
They won’t be getting Pittsburgh’s absolute best.
Backup goalie Marc-Andre Fleury is due to start while Patric Hornqvist, Nick Bonino, Bryan Rust and Brian Dumoulin are expected to be kept out to rest. Evgeni Malkin, Carl Hagelin and Olli Maatta are unavailable because of injury.
In their place are the likes of Dominik Simon, Josh Archibald, Carter Rowney, Kevin Porter and Cameron Gaunce.
Given the stakes, the Leafs will be mindful not to take anything for granted.
“If you look at it last game, you’d say the opportunity was a pretty good one with the lineup (the Lightning) dressed,” said Babcock. “I saw all these people I didn’t know their names skate us into the ground, and so suddenly I got to know some guys’ names. You know what I mean, that’s what happens – they come into the National League, you don’t know who they are and they skate around and they have the puck all the time you get to know their names fast.
“So I got to know some guys on Tampa the other night. So I wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about that; I’d get ready myself and do what we do, and when we do that we have a lot of success. It doesn’t matter who we play.”
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