I will be the first to admit that I was, almost to the last moment, against the Penguins trading for Phil Kessel. I am not going to be a hypocrite and act like I was an advocate all along because I wasn’t.
My concerns, for the most part, were not about Kessel being out of shape, or a poor character in the locker room. I did not like the 8 million dollar cap hit and the high price that Toronto would demand in a trade.
I started to warm up to the idea earlier in the day on July 1st, oddly enough because of the approach that GM Jim Rutherford was taking.