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Michael Kesselring's rise within the Coyotes' system is no surprise to those closest to him
When Arizona’s 2023 development camp began last summer at the Ice Den Scottsdale, former Coyote Jason Demers offered this prophetic statement: “Don’t sleep on Michael Kesselring.”
Kesselring’s place in the organizational pecking order of defensemen was unclear at the time. He wasn’t a part of the development camp roster. He was just in town to train and then jumped on the ice when a couple injuries shortened the camp’s blue line roster.
On top of that, the Coyotes did not draft him. He was a late-round pick and he had spent very little time in the organization after coming over at the 2023 trade deadline in a deal that sent Nick Bjugstad and Cam Dineen to the Edmonton Oilers for Kesselring and a 2023 third-round pick (Vadim Moroz).
The Coyotes already had NHL guys battling for ice time and roles: JJ Moser, Sean Durzi, Matt Dumba, Juuso Välimäki, Troy Stecher, Travis Dermott and Josh Brown.
There was the well-known list of recently drafted or acquired prospects: Dmitri Simashev, Maveric Lamoureux, Artem Duda, Maksymilian Szuber, Victor Söderström, Jérémy Langlois, Vladislav Kolyachonok, Justin Kipkie, Terrell Goldsmith, Matthew Morden and Cal Thomas.
There were the AHL long shots: Patrik Koch, Steven Kampfer, Cameron Crotty and Montana Onyebuchi.
And then there was Kesselring.
“He’s got some things to work on, but he can play in this league right now,” Demers insisted.
It didn’t take long for Kesslering, 24, to turn his former blue-line partner’s prophecy into reality. When Travis Dermott went on IR in November with a hand injury, the Coyotes recalled Kesselring from the Tucson Roadrunners. Since entering the lineup on Nov. 16 in Columbus, he has played 25 games and has four goals and 14 points. The first stat ranks second among rookie defensemen. The latter stats ranks fourth — both in spite of the fact that Kesselring has played a little more than half as many games as his main competition.
“I really like his upside,” Coyotes coach André Tourigny said. “It’s that length, his size, he can make plays with the puck.”
Kesselring still doesn’t have a defined role with the Coyotes. It’s ever-evolving like his game, but he’s used to that.
“People think I’ve always been kind of a defensive defenseman but honestly, in junior, I was an offensive defenseman in Fargo (USHL),” he said. “They told me, ‘You don’t even have to worry about D. Just help us score.’ In college, I was more of a two-way defenseman and then in my first year of pro, it was mostly about playing defense and then my last year I was really good offensively again.
“I want to be a good two-way guy of course. Am I gonna keep up this pace? I dunno. It’s tough to do. It would be a good year but I think I can still do a better job of getting shots through all the time because that’s probably my strength and that’s how most D get their points if they don’t play power play. I keep telling the coaches I want to keep pushing for more and obviously I want to play PK eventually so I’ll just keep pushing for those things.”
Kesselring’s winding road
If you pick through the pieces of Kesslering’s hockey career, you’ll find that he has touched down in just about every region of the United States. He was born in South Carolina while his dad, Casey, was still playing in the ECHL. He attended prep school at New Hampton in New Hampshire, where his dad also coached.
He played juniors in Des Moines, Iowa and Fargo, North Dakota. He played AHL hockey in Bakersfield, California, and for the past year, he has resided in the desert, split between Tucson and the Phoenix area.
Casey and Shawndra Kesselring enjoyed the lifestyle of a pro player while Casey played in The Coast. As Casey recalled, in those days, ECHL players were making pretty good money and their housing was paid for. But with age creeping up on him and his family growing, Casey had to make a decision.
“Michael was already born when I got traded right before Christmas and (Shawndra) was like, ‘That’s it. You gotta get a real job. Enough of this.’ So we moved back up north because she’s from Manchester, New Hampshire,” Casey said.
At first, Casey dabbled in the agent business (he still does for lower-level players) but he eventually got back into youth coaching in the area where he coached Michael and his younger brother, Mason. He also coached at Pinkerton Academy (where he coached former Coyote Zach Sanford) before taking the job at New Hampton one year before Michael enrolled.
When the QMJHL’s Québec Remparts drafted Michael in 2016 — two years into his New Hampton tenure — father and son visited the city and team for a couple days before deciding that the CHL wasn’t right for them. Michael finished up at New Hampton, got drafted by the Oilers, played 12 games that season and all of the next one in the USHL, and then enrolled at Northeastern for two years before jumping to Bakersfield.
“He was always an elite player,” Casey said. “His younger brother was, too, but they’re both late bloomers. So when, when the other kids started to hit puberty, Michael didn’t as much. I think when he went to New Hampton he was 5-10 his freshman year and then, all of the sudden, he was 6-2 and 6-4 (now 6-5).
“I remember at one point thinking, ‘Man, I just hope that he can play Division I college hockey, and then he started to take off as a junior at New Hampton and the scouts started coming.”
AHL lessons
The AHL was an eye-opening experience for Kesselring. Bakersfield is a long way from New Hampshire, but he also discovered that NCAA hockey is a long way down from the NHL’s top developmental league.
“I think if I would have played one more year at college, I could have been a guy that maybe played a few NHL games at the end of the year like a lot of guys do and then maybe I’m a bigger prospect name at that point,” he said. “But my first full year in pro in Bakersfield was tough. I wasn’t ready for it to be as hard as it was. I think the AHL is a very underrated league. So many people don’t understand how good the AHL is, and in some facets, it’s even a little harder than the NHL because it’s more scrambly but it’s still pretty fast and there’s still a lot of skill.
“I was a little caught off guard but that was, I think, a good thing for me because that next summer I worked my bag off to get better and stronger. I came into Bakersfield ready to go last year.”
Aside from the rigorous offseason of training, Kesselring gained another unexpected advantage when the Edmonton Oilers asked Demers to continue his PTO in Bakersfield.
“During [training] camp they had me partnered with Markus Niemeläinen and he ended up making the team to start the year,” Demers said. “They said, ‘We really like what you did with Niemeläinen and we’d like you to go to the minors and play with Kesselring. He’s a righty we want to develop.’ I had seen him at camp and I really liked his game and the way he played. I was like, ‘This kid’s got the tools. If he sharpens them the right way and uses his brain and stays in it, I think he’s got a good chance.’
“I ended up playing the left side with him and I really took a shining to him. I think he’s a great kid and he loves the game so much that he just eats, sleeps and drinks hockey to the point where he sometimes needs to take a step back and take a breath because that can sometimes be detrimental. But listen, the great players are all rink rats and addicts of the game and he’s one of them.”
Demers was trying to prolong his NHL career. After a stormy break-up with the Coyotes and a season playing in the KHL for Ak Bars Kazan, he thought he had done enough to stick with the Oilers, but their cap situation didn’t make that possible. While he was still grappling with that reality, Kesselring came along and gave him purpose in his one season in Bakersfield before retiring.
Demers has a wealth of knowledge and humor to impart from his 13-season pro career. Many of those lessons have nothing to do with Xs and Os, or off-ice approach.
“One of the biggest mistakes a lot of young guys make in the league is bad body language,” Demers said. “They wear it on their faces. They wear it in the way they move on the ice if a play goes bad. We had a lot of conversations about just having better body language.
“There were some funny times where he’d get hit in front of the bench and we couldn’t see him for like 10 seconds and then his head popped up and it looked like he got shot. We were all just laughing.”
Demers said Kesselring has improved that aspect of his game dramatically, but he still sees retro moments in Coyotes games.
“You’ll still see the head kick back sometimes,” Demers said, chuckling. “Sometimes when I played with him, he’d make a great play, he’d shoot it and the D-man would make a great play to deflect it or block it. You’d think that he was dead on the ground because his shoulders would throw back and his head would go with them. I’d have to skate over and say, ‘Take a breath. Everything’s fine. You made a good play. Sometimes, somebody else makes a good play and you gotta tip your hat.’
“There were a lot of funny moments like that where it would just be me on the ice giving him shit for having bad body language, but it’s really just a credit to him caring about his game so much.”
Kesselring wasn’t fully prepared for the trade last spring that sent him to Tucson. Fortunately, his mom was.
“When he got traded, his mom was actually visiting him,” Casey said. “That worked out good for him because he’s not the most organized kid when it comes to anything other than hockey. His mom helped him pack.”
Kesselring played 10 games with the Roadrunners last season (two goals, seven points). Despite sustaining a broken hand on the last day of development camp that forced him to rehab most of this past summer, he impressed the Roadrunners coaching staff early in the 2023-24 season.
“He got himself prepared to play the right way, on and off the ice,” said Roadrunners assistant coach John Slaney, who coaches the defensemen. “His practice habits were excellent and he took care of himself off the ice. Defensively with his size, he was always in the right position to defend. He competed hard, he closed quick, he won his battles, and as far as puck decisions, he made the correct decision and simple plays. He didn’t complicate the game.
“Offensively, unfortunately, he had opportunities to score but he just couldn’t finish. He did join the rush to help offensively, but just before he got called up, he should’ve had four goals.”
NHL opportunity
All eight of the defenseman on the Coyotes’ current roster are playing on expiring contracts. Dumba, Brown, Stecher and Dermott will all be unrestricted free agents this summer. Moser, Durzi, Välimäki and Kesselring will all be restricted free agents, as will Kolyachonok and Söderström, two Roadrunners who have already seen NHL time.
While Durzi and Moser will almost certainly be back, it’s difficult to predict what the rest of the blue line will look like in 2024-25. The safe bet is that most of the RFAs will be back because they are cost-controlled and this is a cost-conscious franchise that isn’t spending anything close to the cap in real dollars. Couple that with Kesselring’s size (Armstrong loves big defensemen), age and emerging game and it’s logical to expect him to be a Coyote.
Coaches always talk about the need for consistency with younger players and that will be one of Kesselring’s challenges. Demers sees others.
“There’s some things defensively he still needs to work on like using his body a little bit better because he’s very strong, playing harder defensively, having a little more bite to his game and just closing out certain positions,” Demers said. “I think that the art of defending is kind of taking a back seat for teams because they want all their D to lead the rush and that’s why you see a lot of this men’s league hockey in the NHL right now.
“I think the pendulum has swung a little too far one way. I think there’s a perfect middle where you could play tight defensively and still lead the rush. It’s just picking your spots and also not allowing certain plays to happen by getting under sticks a little bit better.”
Two plays in the Coyotes’ 3-2 overtime loss to the Calgary Flames on Tuesday illustrate Demers’ point. They also illustrate just how much Demers still watches Kesselring on a nightly basis.
Late in the first period, Kesselring took a double minor for cross-checking and roughing Flames forward Connor Zary, who ran into goalie Connor Ingram. Kesselring gave Zary an extra shot after the initial contact, and then another one while he was on the ice. The play resulted in a two-minute power play after Flames defenseman Jordan Oesterle roughed Kesselring.
Some fans thought it was unnecessary. Demers loved the fact that Kesselring was standing up for his goalie.
“He shouldn’t knock Zary into the net but he gets him back,” Demers said. “I like that.”
On the flip side, on Nazem Kadri’s game-tying goal, Kesselring made a couple mistakes. After Martin Posposil beat Troy Stecher wide, he slipped a pass across the crease. Kesselring was in position, but he neither prevented the pass across nor tied up Kadri’s stick.
“I probably watch 75 to 80 percent of his shifts and I talk to him probably every couple of days — sometimes probably against his will,” Demers said. “I’ll go through his clips and try to keep him levelheaded because he’s obviously on a good run right now.”
Demers critiques aside, there are times when he lifts Kesselring’s spirits, too.
“A few weeks ago after that one game against Philly, I was like, ‘Don’t be blunt. Give me positives. I know the bad was bad so just give me something to work with here,'” Kesselring said, laughing. “Even now, we’re still texting after mostly every game about little things to work on.
“Having his support is huge for me because I was a late pick and a minor-league guy so to have someone who really believes you can play helps a lot. Even when I first got called up, the first few shifts against Columbus I was thinking, ‘This is really fast. Am I ready for this?’ He kept talking to me and I kept playing better and better. He’s just a great guy; like an all-time good guy.”
With so many changes coming to the Coyotes’ blue line in the near future, and so much improvement still ahead for Kesselring, it’s hard to peg his role in the franchise’s blue line of tomorrow.
Unless you ask Demers.
“I think he has all the makings of being a top-four guy consistently,” Demers said. “Offensively, people are starting to see how good he can be with the puck in the o-zone and I think five-on-five scoring is very underrated in the NHL. A lot of people value that power-play defenseman and I know he would love to play power play, but I’ve always told him his path is penalty kill and five-and-five scoring.
“If he can be consistently producing at five-on-five, there’s a lot of teams that need that. He listens, he works hard at his game and he is smart enough to add things to his game without losing sight of what makes him great as a player.”
Top photo via Getty Images: Michael Kesselring (right) celebrates a goal against the Ottawa Senators with teammate Travis Dermott
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