Phil Kessel‘s days as a member of the Arizona Coyotes are officially a thing of the past, and he doesn’t seem upset about it one bit.
Kessel agreed to a one-year, $1.5 million contract with the Vegas Golden Knights this week, ending his three-year stint with the Coyotes. The team had originally acquired Kessel via a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The two-time Stanley Cup champion will be turning 35 before this upcoming season begins, and he is clearly happy to finally have another chance to be competitive.
While it’s no secret that the Golden Knights are a better team than the Coyotes, Kessel sort of confirmed the feelings that hockey fans have had for a while about his old team.
Phil Kessel took a shot at the Coyotes after joining Vegas.
It’s obvious that Arizona is not a competitive team, and it often seems as though they don’t care whether they are or not. The Coyotes have lost consistently, acquired bad contracts just to rack up draft capital, and agreed to play in a college arena.
Nothing about the Coyotes is appealing, but Kessel said the following on Thursday, which to me, makes things seem even worse.
"It's going to be nice playing on a team that wants to win."
— Greg Wyshynski (@wyshynski) August 25, 2022
- Phil Kessel on the @GoldenKnights vs. playing for the @ArizonaCoyotes
The key word in that quote is “want.” It’s one thing to lose each year despite trying to be competitive (you could think of the Buffalo Sabres), but when a former player implies that the Coyotes don’t even want to win, that speaks volumes.
A note from Kelly McCrimmon, the Vegas general manager, further indicates Kessel’s feelings toward playing in the desert.
McCrimmon- "One of the things I like about Phil Kessel is he's really motivated, and feels like he's been forgotten in Arizona with the team struggling like it has. He has something to prove."
— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) August 25, 2022
The point here is that while we can speculate from the outside that this team doesn’t want to win or isn’t fun to play for, these sentiments from Kessel, who spent three seasons in a Yotes sweater, confirm that thinking.
Entering the 2022-2023 season, Arizona has a full roster with more than $20 million in cap space. Nothing about that indicates that a different result is on the horizon for Arizona.
It’s disappointing that all of these conversations about the Coyotes are so negative all the time, but Kessel’s comments give us an inside perspective of the organization, and it’s anything but a glowing review.