Insider reveals blockbuster trade that almost sent Phil Kessel to the Blues!

This is one would be trade that legitimately could have changed the course of history as far as the National Hockey League is concerned. 

In an extremely intriguing article penned for The Athletic earlier today St. Louis Blues insider Jeremy Rutherford revealed just how close one Phil Kessel came to becoming a member of the St. Louis Blues. So close in fact that according to Rutherford's sources on this story it sounds like everything was a done deal and it's not entirely clear why the trade was never made.

It was comments from former NHL great Keith Tkachuk that revealed to Rutherford that the veteran forward came very close to being traded to the Boston Bruins at the end of his time with the Blues, so close in fact that the paperwork was all done and signed even though the trade itself never became a reality.

“You heard rumblings and I was getting older, so we were just waiting to see what would happen,” Tkachuk said as per Rutherford's report. “But nothing was going on, so I decided to hop in the car and head home. And then boom!. I got a call from (Blues general manager) Larry Pleau saying, ‘Why don’t you come on back, I want to talk to you.'”

“He said, ‘There’s an opportunity we might be able to send you to Boston,'” Tkachuk said. “He said, ‘It’s not done yet, but are you willing to waive your no-trade if we get it done? I said, ‘Yeah’ … So he got the paperwork and I signed it.”

Rutherford was able to get in touch with the aforementioned Larry Pleau and was able to ask him about this very trade, and much to my surprise the former general manager confirmed at least part of the story.

“Yeah, we had a trade with Walt,” Pleau said this week. “I told him that it looks like you’re going to go to Boston. We got the waiver done and everything because Boston basically said it was a done deal.”

What Pleau would not confirm however were the other pieces involved in the trade but Rutherford did some digging and thanks to his sources he now knows all 3 players involved in this trade deal. Rutherford reports that the deal would have sent both Tkachuk as well as David Perron to the Boston Bruins in exchange for a young man by the name of Phil Kessel. This of course would have had to have been before he was eventually traded to the Maple Leafs, which means he could very well have never ended up as a Pittsburgh Penguin and could very well have 0 Stanley Cups rings at this point in his career. On the other hand Kessel might also have been the piece that put the Blues over the top and he could have led that franchise to the promise land, something they have not done since the time of this trade that never was.

While there is no question that both Perron and Tkachuk were very good NHL players, you have to wonder if this is the kind of trade that would have hurt Boston in the long run had they pulled the trigger. I suppose with that in mind it should come as no surprise that Peter Chiarelli was the man in the general manager's chair in Boston at the time.