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Phil Kessel first from his draft class to hit 800 games, has been consistently healthy

That doesn’t mean he didn’t get laid up when he was younger, though...

The other night, Phil Kessel did something pretty special: he became the first member of his draft class to play 800 NHL games.

The next guy on the list from 2006? Jordan Staal, who has played 732 games. After him, the drop off gets that much steeper; there are only four players from that same class who are within 100 games of Kessel.

In fact, of the 11 NHL seasons he’s played, in just three of them he didn’t play the full year - and even then, the most he ever missed was 12 games.

So you could say Kessel is a pretty durable player.

Maybe he got all of those injuries out of his system when he was younger?

Aww, look at the little guy! His mom even signed his giant cast.

Let’s hope we never have to see Kessel laid up like that again - but for when this happened decades ago, well, at least we got a pretty adorable picture out of it.