Sunday, November 06, 2011

In Which There is Rage

I am an angry little Leafs fan right now. The Bruins just beat us 7-0 and Seguin (who I call Sequin) had his first career hat trick. If you're sick of the Kessel vs. Seguin debate, this post is not for you. It's mostly just to let me rant.

Okay so by now everyone knows that the Leafs traded two first rounders (and some other stuff that isn't important to this argument) to Boston for Phil Kessel. We've been mocked for it. My question is, why?

At this moment, Phil Kessel is leading the league in goals, points, and he would've led in +/- if it wasn't for this game, which I will never speak of again. He's at 10 goals and 21 points in 14 games. That's a 1.5 ppg pace. Meanwhile, Sequin the Golden Boy has 7 goals and 14 points (after the HT) in 12 games. That's 1.166666(etc) ppg. Yes, it's a small sample size. Let's look at last year, shall we? Sequin had 11 goals and 22 points in 74 games (0.297 ppg). Kessel had 32 goals and 64 points in 82 games (0.780 ppg). Hmm, 0.297 vs. 0.780... one of these numbers is significantly better than the other...

And this is when smart people realise that it's not fair to compare the two, because Sequin's a sophomore and Kessel's in his 6th NHL season. Accurate comparisons will be made after their careers are over. So you can say the Bruins won the trade all you want, but that means you want to compare how both players are doing up to this point in time. And as I demonstrated above, the Leafs are winning in that respect. What's that you say? Sequin's going to be the next Crosby? Sure, he could be. He could turn out to be the best player that ever played in the history of hockey. He could also be an average NHLer for the rest of his career. Or, he could go pointless for the rest of the season and then become a marginal AHLer. Or he could quit hockey tomorrow and become a monk. I hope you realise where I'm going with this.

Oh, but Boston won the Cup last year. Thank you for informing me, I would never have known otherwise. In those 13 playoff games last year, Sequin had 7 points and was largely ineffective besides that one game that everyone went crazy over and I can't be bothered to recall. At this point the haters usually say that Kessel hasn't even been in the playoffs since becoming a Leaf. Again, thank you for pointing that out for me. The Leafs are a crappier team than the Bruins. Surprise, surprise. But we're not comparing the teams here, we're comparing the players. So the Leafs standings compared to the Bruins are meaningless. If anything, it's a testament to Phil's talent that he's racking up that many point with crappy linemates.

When the Leafs made that trade, we didn't expect we'd be giving Boston a 2nd overall pick. We have no way of knowing who won that trade yet. But if you choose to bring it up again, I hope you know that at this point in time, Toronto is winning the trade by a mile.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Your arguments actually make me feel better...thank you :P But it would still be nice for Kessel to score a hat trick (or two :D ) against the Bruins, y'know, for -my- ego/pool? *sigh*

gingersnowflake said...

I'm last in that pool -_-

-S

Mike Tremblay said...

Bruins fan here... It's obviously way too early to tell, both guys are very, very young and each could have 10-15 very productive years ahead of them. However, I think Seguin at 19 is ahead of where Kessel was at 20 in his first full (82 game) season with the Bruins (19 goals, 18 assists, -6). Seguin has 7 goals through 12 games, which is on pace for 48 goals or so.

I'm in Boston so I don't know what the Hockey Night in Canada reaction was to that game, but I think here, where Milan Lucic lead the team with 30 goals last year (about 18 were empty-netters), a legitimate, exciting scoring threat is something we haven't seen here in quite a while.

Kessel might be a Hart Trophy contender every year, but I'm glad the Bruins made this trade. You're forgetting the trade also produced Dougie Hamilton, who won't play for the B's this year, and looks like he could be a beast at defense.

gingersnowflake said...

That's a good point, obviously Sequin's developing faster than Kessel. It's funny that you mention "the legitimate, exciting scoring threat" because that's exactly why we love Phil so much. HNIC's reaction to this trade basically embodies everything I'm ranting at in this post haha.

- S
You're right that I didn't mention Dougie Hamilton; as I said the rant/rage is based on what's going on right now (specifically the love for Sequin). Hamilton, and Jared Knight to a lesser extent, have the potential to be pretty good players. But again, that's potential that can't be measured right now.