Eh, I don't think Lombardi/Burke/Holmgren/Poile are a grit and truculence monolith either. I do think they chose players that Tortorella has supposedly worked well with in the past like Dubinsky, but their stated goal with this team was to find good team guys who would do what their coach asked of them. The problem with that is that guys who get that rep, get it because they aren't throwing up huge points — if they were, that's what people would be talking about. I've already seen far too many narratives about how Team USA looked flat, they didn't seem to be trying, etc. instead of the truth: they picked a bunch of slow dudes, and of course, they got outskated.

tl;dr I don't think they left Phil Kessel off because he lacks truculence; I think they left Phil Kessel off because the Toronto media has successfully painted him as locker room cancer.