Jul 15, 2017 5 min read

Who wants to trade Phil Kessel?

Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford said on the radio a few days ago that he has no intention of trading him but the feeling seems to persist among fans and some in the media that the Penguins would like to trade him.

Why?

Because, according to some, he doesn’t shoot enough and his head coach Mike Sullivan is tired of dealing with him. The speculation was amped up when Rick Tocchet left his job as a Penguins assistant to become head coach of the Arizona Coyotes. Insiders will tell you that Tocchet was a good buffer between Sullivan and Kessel and that Kessel was going to be disappointed to see Tocchet go.

If that’s the case, everybody needs to grow up and deal with it. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin won one Stanley Cup without Phil Kessel on their team and two with him.

Maybe you read about the last two. It was in all of the papers.

There has been a lot of talk about Kessel scoring only 23 goals in the regular season and that not being enough for a guy making a little over $6 million a year.

He scored 26 in 2015-16. A three goal difference over 82 games? That’s one fewer goal every 27 games.

There have been complaints that he tried to be too much of a playmaker instead of a goal scorer.

He had 33 assists in 2015-16 and 47 assists last season.

In NHL individual scoring, assists count the same as goals for a reason. Kessell had 70 points this past season compared to 59 points in 2015-16. That tells me that he was at least partially responsible for 11 more goals this season. How about the playoffs?

Last season, he had 10 goals and 12 assists. This year, he had eight goals and 15 assists. That’s one more point this season.

He was a plus-5 in last year’s playoffs. This year he was a plus-12.

For the seventh season in a row, he played in every game.

And if it’s true that Kessel is a head coach’s nightmare, why would any GM pay any player $6 million to torment his coach? What could Rutherford expect to get in return that would make the Penguins a better team?

The Penguins are Kessel’s third team in 10 years, so maybe he’s not the most coachable star in the NHL, but maybe he’s also a pretty good fit for the Penguins and should stick around.

• Remember when the Houston Astros were a National League team and in the Central Division with the Pirates? It’s a good thing for the Pirates they moved to the American League. They came into the weekend 32 games over .500 and leading the AL Central by 16 ½ games.

The Astros have a good young team and a new TV contract that will pay them $1.6 billion over 20 years. Not a good division partner for the Pirates.

• Chances are pretty good O.J. Simpson will be granted parole this week. Bad news for his wife’s killer. O.J. will undoubtedly be back out there searching for him. Mostly on golf courses.

• I’m having a little trouble getting interested in the Floyd Mayweather fight. It might have something to do with never having the desire to watch either of them fight. Another factor could be the length of time I’ve spent on the planet. Long enough to remember when boxing was as interesting and exciting as any sport in America.

• I might be interested in watching either one of them fight Phil Kessel.

• I had the purveyors of two local sports websites tell me this week the interest in the Pirates borders on non-existent. Being a daily source of misery for 27 of the last 34 years might have something to do with that.

• The South Carolina Youth Soccer Association is telling parents to shut up. It’ll be Silent September when the kids show up to play this season. Parents will sign a form acknowledging that if they make any noise on the sideline of a SCYCA game, they will be asked to leave.

The association, which is statewide and organizes kids as young as 5, was losing referees and having trouble attracting new ones because of the abuse from parents.

Youth leagues everywhere will be watching to see if silence on the sidelines will work for them. There was a time when parents didn’t feel obligated to show up every time their kid was near a ball. It might be nice if parents actually made the choice not to show up once in a while. It might be a popular idea with a lot of the kids.

And 5-year-olds might be happier and better off playing hide and seek in the back yard.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter