The best ice hockey player in the world called him a monster in the gym.
But Phil Kessel is also associated with sausage with bread.
Tonight, against Toronto, the Vegas forward could make 989 straight NHL games and touch a hard-to-beat record.
Phil Kessel35, is a two-time Stanley Cup winner, Olympic silver medalist and one of the best American players of the 2000s.
But stories abound about Kessel. Among other things, that he loves food too much to be athletic and that he would be lazy and untrained.
But he is still one game away from setting Keith Yandel’s record of 989 consecutive NHL games.
“The most reliable customer of the sausage seller”
For example, Toronto Sun columnist Steve Simmons wrote an interesting column in 2015, when Kessel left Toronto for Pittsburgh, that column started like this:
“The hot dog seller who parks his car daily at the intersection of Front and John Street has lost his most trusted customer. Roughly every afternoon at 2:30 p.m., often wearing a beanie, Phil Kessel walked from his neighborhood apartment to his daily snack. “He’s gone now,” Simmons wrote.
Since then, Kessel has chased sausages with bread. So, when he won the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh and had his traditional day with the Stanley Cup in 2017, he posted a photo of him eating sausage with bread straight from the cup:
“Sausage with bread tastes better than a dente,” he wrote on Instagram.
But regardless of his eating habits, there is no doubt that Phil Kessel is keeping fit.
Conor McDavid, considered by many to be the best hockey player in the world, said the following about Kessel in an interview with Sportsnet three years ago:
– He’s a monster in the gym. Lots of nonsense has been said about him, but he works hard. He is an “eccentric”, can stand under an iron bar and carry more than 160 kilograms, bending legs while still having a conversation with one of them. He said he was no match for him.
Almost 1000 matches
And the proof that Kessel isn’t a very good coach at all is that he’s now approaching 1,000 consecutive NHL games.
On Tuesday night, Vegas meets Kessel’s former Toronto side and can then touch Keith Yandel’s so-called “Iron Man record” in 989 games. Against San Jose the next day, he could single-handedly be number one.
That means a lot for him to break the record was evident last season in a game with then-Arizona Kessel team. Away from Detroit, he played a game before leaving the ring and boarding a private charter plane to Phoenix. the reason? To be present at the birth of their first child.
Arizona coach Andre Torini said Kessel was ready to play the whole game before going home but the coach insisted.
– Torrini said it’s much more important than hockey, according to Sportsnet.