When Phil Kessel takes the ice Friday at PPG Paints Arena, things will be very different.

First, he’ll be wearing the brick red, desert sand and black uniform (per the team’s media guide) of the Arizona Coyotes.

Second, he might not recognize many of the faces in the black and yellow of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Gone are his comrades on the HBK Line, Carl Hagelin and Nick Bonino.

So, too, are other stalwarts of the teams he helped win the Stanley Cup with in 2016 and ’17 such as Trevor Daley, Matt Cullen, Conor Sheary, Marc-Andre Fleury, Tom Kuhnhackl, Chris Kunitz, Ian Cole and others.

Even a lot of the individuals Kessel was on the ice with for last season’s humiliating four-game sweep by the New York Islanders won’t be there.

Sidney Crosby, Patric Hornqvist and Brian Dumoulin are recuperating from long-term injuries.

Heck, Nick Bjugstad won’t be there.

Walking into the Penguins’ dressing room after practice at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday, it became starkly evident that so few members of the team who will face Kessel spent meaningful time with the enigmatic All-Star.

In fact, several of the players who will fill up the lineup card watched Kessel, a 14-year veteran, as fans before competing with or against him.

“Phil was one of my favorite players growing up,” said forward Jared McCann, a 23-year-old from Stratford, Ontario. “He’s a guy I watched play for the (Maple) Leafs, being from Ontario.”

Joining the Penguins in February, McCann played with Kessel for less than three months before Kessel was dealt in the offseason.

“He was my stall (neighbor). He was the guy sitting right next to me,” McCann said. “He was always a guy who was just coming to the rink happy. Just fun to be around.”

Goaltender Matt Murray was one of the few players in the Penguins’ room Thursday who shared the success of the 2016 and ’17 Stanley Cup titles with Kessel.

“He’s just a genuine guy,” Murray said. “He’s just genuinely himself no matter what. I admire that about him. He’s a funny guy once you get to know him. He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s very laid back, very friendly. Just a genuinely a good guy.”

Kessel’s laid-back ways often grated with the highly detailed stratagem employed by coach Mike Sullivan and the organization as a whole. That dissimilitude prompted the team to attempt to trade him to the Minnesota Wild in May, but Kessel, who had a limited-trade clause in his deal, nixed that would-be transaction. Eventually, the team moved him to the Arizona Coyotes by late June in a deal that brought Alex Galchenyuk to Pittsburgh.

On the day the trade was executed, general manager Jim Rutherford and Kessel offered conflicting tales as to how Kessel’s time with the Penguins concluded.

Rutherford said Kessel had requested to be traded several times but occasionally walked those requests back. Kessel somewhat suggested that was not the case and claimed Rutherford told him he would “never be a Penguin again.”

Presumably, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Regardless of how they parted ways, that did not prevent Rutherford from thanking Phil Kessel, among others, during his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto last month.

“I didn’t see any issues when he left,” Rutherford told the Tribune-Review by phone Sunday. “It’s always hard to trade a player that’s had the impact on an organization like he did. That’s difficult to to do.

“As far as mentioning him during my hall of fame speech, he was a big part of my career. He’s a player that made a difference in giving me chance to get to the hall of fame.”

The two most recent Stanley Cup banners that hang from the rafters of PPG Paints Arena are evidence of that.

All of that will make for a unique experience Friday.

“It will be weird, obviously,” said defenseman Justin Schultz, a member of each of those Stanley Cup teams. “Played for a while with him here. He was a big part of our two championships.

“He’s a really laid-back guy, a nice guy, funny. He was fun to have in the locker room. We sure miss him.”

Follow the Penguins all season long.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)