Kessel meets the media: Quotes galore

Phil Kessel has met the media in Toronto and here are some of the quotes worth noting.

PHIL KESSEL
"It's the best hockey city in the world," Kessel said. "The fans here are great. It's a first-class organization. They just love hockey here in Toronto. It's one of the reasons I chose Minnesota in college. In Minnesota, they love hockey. It's the No. 1 sport. Here in Toronto, hockey's it. I want to be part of that. I'm so excited to be here and be part of the organization."

"Obviously there's going to be pressure, but I'm going to work as hard as I can and try to help get this team into the playoffs," said Kessel. "I want to be considered a great player in this league, and I'm going to work as hard as I can. I'm here to help this team win."

"My shoulder is doing well," said the native of Madison, Wisc. "I started skating again about a week ago, and shooting the puck around, and it's been good. I'm going to check with the doctor (Sunday). It looks like a month or a month-and-a-half".

"I never one time asked to be traded," Kessel said. "I think it just became a mutual thing that it was best for both parties to move on. That's basically what happened with that."

BRIAN BURKE
GM Brian Burke said that 36 goals was a platform, not a peak. "The way we play, the way we want to attack and utilize his speed, it's like someone wrote a script and handed it to Phil," Burke said. "This is the right team to be on."

ZDENO CHARA
"We are all happy with what we have, the group of guys we have in this room," captain Zdeno Chara said. "I can't really make comments on Phil's behalf, what he felt, why he decided not to be part of it. It's absolutely Phil's decision. It's part of the business."

CLAUDE JULIEN

"My first year here (2007-08) was really trying to convince him that we were really trying to make him a better player and that he needed to just understand that," Julien said on Saturday. "Obviously, he did because he scored 36 goals the next year (and was a plus-23), but I even told him in a conversation that I didn't get a bonus for making him a bad player, so that he had to understand that everything I did was to try and make him a better player and I think that message was understood."