Who pens shouldve got for Kessel

Garland is one of the best contracts in the league. Would have been a great return for Phil.

As someone who's been on the Garland band wagon since he was passed over in his draft year, I'm very happy with his play. He should've gone that year, but undersized (He was listed at 5'8 although he is now 5'10) and not an elite skater, he got passed over. Next year he dominated the Q, and went 5th round despite his comparables for such a large growth being players like Mark Stone. Even at the time of the Kessel trade, rookie Garland had 13G 5A 18P in 43 GP, but did it in very limited minutes, and had shown his ability to get to the netfront despite his size in the NHL, and was above a point per game in the AHL as a U23 player (very good indicator). People always just sleep on the smaller players who lack elite separation speed until they prove it as dominant NHL players. One i'm hoping for to prove people like this now is Robertson, who should've gone around 20th in his draft and fell to 53rd because of size mixed with speed concerns.

He’s really improved

Clicked enter early, but the whole post was supposed to say "As someone who's been on the Garland band wagon since he was passed over in his draft year, I'm very happy with his play. He should've gone that year, but undersized (He was listed at 5'8 although he is now 5'10) and not an elite skater, he got passed over. Next year he dominated the Q, and went 5th round despite his comparables for such a large growth being players like Mark Stone. Even at the time of the Kessel trade, rookie Garland had 13G 5A 18P in 43 GP, but did it in very limited minutes, and had shown his ability to get to the netfront despite his size in the NHL, and was above a point per game in the AHL as a U23 player (very good indicator). People always just sleep on the smaller players who lack elite separation speed until they prove it as dominant NHL players. One i'm hoping for to prove people like this now is Robertson, who should've gone around 20th in his draft and fell to 53rd because of size mixed with speed concerns."

This trade was the beginning of the end for the Pens run.

Galchenyuk was such a bad miss. Garland was pretty unknown at this point but yes in hindsight this would have been nice. Really good player now.

If I was doing the trade I would have been trying for Garland, Dvorak or Hinostroza. Dvorak had 7 points in 20 games that year but was a good prospect. Hinostroza had same amount of points as Galchenyuk in same amount of games.

Others could have been Crouse and Chychryn but then it would be unlikely to get POJ as well.