NHL star selling Pittsburgh-area home sees lonely theater image go viral

After a June trade, Phil Kessel is relocating to Arizona, leaving behind a teddy bear and two mannequins

Phil Kessel's Pittsburgh home is on the market (Credit: Getty Images, Realtor)
Phil Kessel's Pittsburgh home is on the market (Credit: Getty Images, Realtor)

No stranger to stopovers in new cities, professional athletes can often have large, if sparsely-furnished, homes.

Enter Phil Kessel, a star wingman for the National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penguins, who recently put his 8,000-square-foot home in the city’s northern suburb of Marshall, Pennsylvania, on the market for $2.1 million following a June trade to the Arizona Coyotes.

There are few visual signs Kessel ever lived in the Steel City, despite his four years with the Penguins. His home went viral this week thanks to a cavernous home theater that exudes emptiness, a room occupied solely by a large teddy bear and a hallway with two casually dressed mannequins standing sentry.

But before you judge Kessel for his quirky taste, or lump him in with other pro athletes that leave behind relatively empty homes as they move from city to city, TheWrap reports that not everything is as it seems.

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Dave Tumpa and his wife, Wendy, of Pittsburgh-based Berkshire Hathaway HomeSerivces affiliate Preferred Realty, have the listing for Kessel’s five-bedroom, seven-and-a-half bathroom home. He told TheWrap that he and his wife staged the interior of the home for dramatic effect. It turns out Kessel never even used his home theater, or, presumably, made much use of the sole chair that sits before a mammoth screen.

“You’re the only reporter that called me,” Tumpa said, when asked by TheWrap whether he was surprised that the internet went wild with speculation as to whether Kessel was a recluse who preferred to watch movies alone, presumably in the company of stuffed animals and creepy mannequins. [TheWrap] – Mike Seemuth