Kessel would have been the No. 2 pick behind Sidney Crosby in last year's draft if he'd been eligible. With a birthday in October '87, he only missed being eligible by a few weeks... It has been reported that some scouts, maybe as many as half the scouting staffs of NHL teams, favoured Kessel over Sidney Crosby last year. This isn't just pie-in-the-sky stuff, but rather a question that scouts had to sort out all season long... It's hard to find many scouts who'll 'fess up to a previously held opinion that Kessel was a prospect even close to Crosby, never mind ahead of him.