Let’s empty the notebook again:
• If the Penguins win the Stanley Cup, there are many moves made by Jim Rutherford that deserve high praise but beyond changing coaches, the most important one was the trade for Phil Kessel.
At the time there were a lot of people who didn’t like the trade. They thought the Penguins added another malcontent prima donna who doesn’t do much more than try to score. Those criticisms grew louder as Kessel didn’t seem to play well with either of the Penguins’ two star centers and didn’t have the kind of season (in terms of goal scoring) that people expected.