Michael Kesselring didn't like the state of his game as the Christmas holiday approached. After a strong start to the season that helped fill the void left by injuries to Sean Durzi and John Marino, the Utah Hockey Club defenseman felt his play had "slipped a little bit."
So Kesselring reached out to an old friend who has been mentoring him since their days together with the American Hockey League's Bakersfield Condors.
"A lot of guys don't ask for help because they maybe feel a little bit embarrassed to admit that things aren't going well, " said Jason Demers, who played 13 seasons with five NHL teams and currently serves as an analyst for NHL Network. "Give Kess credit. He reached out and he keeps reaching out. If somebody texts me, I'll always answer."
Demers watches clips of Kesselring and a handful of other former teammates with whom he developed friendships, including Utah center Barrett Hayton, a one-time Demers roommate. The idea is to provide feedback. Sometimes the analysis is technical. Sometimes Demers admits he yells. Most of the time, his advice is steeped in wisdom.
"He knows the game and he had a similar path to me where he had to work his way up to the NHL, so it's nice to talk to someone who went through it all," Kesselring said. "He actually gave me a good reset a few weeks ago."
That reset helped Kesselring regain his early-season form — and not a moment too soon. With defenseman Mikhail Sergachev out of the lineup with an upper-body injury, Kesselring has averaged 21 minutes and 30 seconds of ice time over the past two games while quarterbacking the top power play unit; a role that will continue Thursday in Minnesota against the Wild.
Kesselring scored on a first period power-play in a 4-2 win against St. Louis on Saturday. He logged 21:59 of ice time — his most since Nov. 29 — in a 5-2 win against the Central Division leading Winnipeg Jets two nights later.
"Kess played really good but it's not in one or two games that you will see it," coach André Tourigny said. "I'm happy and I'm excited about what lies ahead, but at the same time he's got to keep that going. It's about consistency so let's put on our working boots and get at it; do that same thing tomorrow."
Kesselring's raw tools are obvious. He's 6 feet 5, he can skate and he has a big shot that GM Bill Armstrong labels "a howitzer." Even so, most analysts viewed his inclusion in a 2023 trade-deadline deal as a throw-in. Armstrong was in draft-pick acquisition mode back then, so the assumption was that the third-round pick he got back from Edmonton for center Nick Bjugstad and defenseman Cam Dineen was the more coveted piece.
Armstrong's pro scouts had other ideas.
"I would like to say I'm the genius on that one, but I would say David Oliver and the rest of our pro staff did an incredible job of evaluating Michael Kesselring," said Armstrong, who compares Kesselring to St. Louis defenseman Colton Parayko, whom Armstrong drafted in 2012 as the Blues director of amateur scouting. "You have to listen to your scouts and you can feel the passion when somebody really likes a player. Our group, with David Oliver spearheading it, said 'Listen, if you're going to do this deal, get this piece.'
"What they really liked about him was that he had all the qualities we look for. He's got length, he plays the game hard, he's got a big boomer of a shot. He was raw in some areas, but they felt there'd be some growth with some strength added and some good coaching. So credit to our sports science staff and our coaching staff, too. They've done a nice job with him."
All of those pieces would mean nothing, however, without the key ingredient.
"Let's be honest," Armstrong said. "The main kicker is the drive of the player. It's the will to improve. How hard are they going to work in the summer? That's one of Kess's best attributes. I don't want to say he's got a little anger inside him, but he's got some drive in him. When he goes home in the summer, it's not to water ski. It's to get better as a hockey player."
After a confidence-boosting performance for Team USA at the 2024 IIHF World Championship in Prague, Kesselring touched all the usual areas in his summer regimen with trainer Pat Gigante back in Massachusetts. But he also incorporated more movement-based training.
"I did a lot more sprinting and hurdle jumping and straight-line sprints," he said. "I did a lot of tennis ball drills, like reactionary stuff where my trainer would throw it in a direction and I've got to respond quickly. It really helped me get more athletic."
He also focused on an area of his game that he knew needed improvement: the defensive zone.
"If you ask me one thing he does better than when he arrived, I think he's more competitive physically," Tourigny said. "The first year, it was tougher for him to create a stop in the D-zone, to stop the cycle, to be physical in his battles, net front and that kind of stuff. Now he has grown into his body. He's a tall man, but he's a strong man as well."
Tourigny and Demers also see more maturity in Kesselring's approach to the mental side of the game.
"Michael is such a competitor that he sometimes puts too much pressure on himself because he wants to do well so badly," Demers said.
That was a point of focus for Tourigny and the coaching staff.
"The first solution to every problem is to see the problem so the important thing for him was not to see it from the coach's perspective; he had to see it for himself," Tourigny said. "'What was my performance today? Was it a six out of 10? Eight out of 10? 10 out of 10?'
"You want the player to see the good and the bad in his performance, and have an honest opinion of his performance, but sometimes with a young player, one mistake brings a second mistake, a third mistake. You beat yourself up, whereas a veteran will understand, 'OK, I screwed that one up. That's it. We're moving on to the next play and we're not coming back to that one. We're not trying to make up for it.' Kess is improving in that."
Kesselring's emotional approach has made him a bit of a cult hero in Utah — a status that may have started when he scored 18 seconds into a 4-2 win at St. Louis on Nov. 7, then followed the goal with his usual, exuberant celebration. The moment led the social media team to label him KesselKING, and the label has stuck.
"I get a lot of slander for it in the locker room, but it's all in good fun," he said, laughing.
With wins in its past two games, Utah has kept itself in the thick of the Western Conference wild card race. Marino is back, Sergachev (and Robert Bortuzzo) should return at some point soon and Durzi is also on the mend, so the team may get the opportunity to see what a fully healthy blue line looks like for the first time this season.
The impending return of those players was a source of more stress for Kesselring until he chatted with Demers and arrived at a big-picture understanding of the situation.
"I was starting to get nervous because I felt like I proved I'm a top-four D-man but I was going to lose ice time," he said. "[Demers] helped me calm down and talk me out of that way of thinking.
"If I keep playing like I have this last little bit, I'm going to get ice time; I'm going to get an opportunity. Is there going to be a little less? Yeah, but it's because we have a lot of good players, and if we have a lot of good D-men it's going to help our team win. We've kind of been talking that we want to be one of the best back ends in the league, so let's see if we can do that."