He's Still Patrick Kane
With a vintage "Showtime" performance in Chicago Sunday night, Patrick Kane—now a Red Wing—made clear that he remains the same Patrick Kane as he ever was. On all that entails:
Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports - He's Still Patrick Kane"Good feeling on that breakaway," he said, the afterglow and emotion having not yet subsided in the post-game dressing room. "I think you know the feeling of the moment when you get that puck, but just tried to stick with what I wanted to do."
As had been the case so many times before, Patrick Kane had every eye in the United Center on him, this time skating in on Petr Mrazek on a breakaway in three-on-three overtime that looked more like a shootout attempt for how far behind the rest of the game he'd slipped.
A peek over his shoulder confirmed he had time to slow down, to give all those watching an extra moment to take it all in, before the inevitable: a lightning bolt of a wrist shot to the roof, a game-winner, and an ovation unlike any other in a building that's seen stars from Michael Jordan to Kane himself many times over.
When Kane signed in Detroit, there was one question that hovered over the experiment: Was he still Patrick Kane? What version of the three-time Stanley Cup champion with the Chicago Blackhawks had the Red Wings acquired, at age 35 with hip re-surfacing surgery the most recent sight in the rearview mirror?
Since making his signing official on Nov. 28, Kane has played just 27 games as a Red Wing, but his level of production after major hip surgery is already unprecedented. With 12 goals and 16 assists, Kane is north of point-a-game pace after an operation that leaves most NHLers, even great NHLers, lucky to play another game, much less produce in one.
However, it's not the points that provide an answer to the question of Kane's present identity; it's his undeniable star power that make that answer a definitive, unequivocal yes. He's still Patrick Kane.
When Kane won his third Cup in 2015, he'd never had a 100-point regular season, but he'd earned the nickname "Showtime" for moments like the overtime goal that beat Philadelphia and clinched the 2010 Cup or the OT winner that broke the Kings' hearts in the 2013 Western Conference Final en route to Conn Smythe honors or the third-period goal that put the Lightning out of reach in the '15 Cup Final. "Showtime" wasn't about regular season scoring; it was about the inevitability with which he perpetually delivered in the biggest games' most important moments.
Kane's latest star turn—the one that affirms beyond all doubt that "Showtime" he remains—came by assuming center stage in a unique iteration of an Original Six rivalry in a peculiar position. There can be no denying that the animosity between has fizzled since Detroit left the Western Conference for the East in 2013-14, the season after the two side's most recent postseason confrontation. That both teams have faded thoroughly from Cup contention in the years since Chicago's 2015 Cup has only intensified this effect.
But even when tensions were closer to their zenith than their nadir, this has always been a rivalry defined by players walking between enemy camps. Chris Chelios, whose number was retired by the Blackhawks yesterday before Kane stole the show, and Bob Probert are beloved by both fan bases. More ignominiously, Marian Hossa defected from Detroit to Chicago after one season with the Red Wings, proceeding to play a central role in all three modern Blackhawks championships. Mrazek himself, the latest goalie to fall prey to Kane's power, is a Red Wing-turned-Blackhawk.
Yet even if there is precedent for players jumping sides, Kane's moment at the United Center Sunday was something else entirely. Red Wing and Blackhawk fans alike roared their approval for number 88 as he scored the OT winner, then took one last solo twirl around the ice to accept the fans' goodwill—rivals made strange bedfellows through their mutual infatuation for a singular superstar, the rare figure to buck the team-before-everything culture of the sport.
Kane's stardom spans generations. At his pre-game ceremony, the 62-year-old Chelios declared that Kane "will go down as the greatest American-born player" in the game's history. In the days leading up to the game, Connor Bedard—the 18-year-old who has replaced Kane as Chicago's talisman—said, "he's an icon of the game, and he's gonna be someone that's remembered forever."
Of course, "he's still Patrick Kane" means something else too. Kane's personal history hasn't changed and can't be ignored just because he's enjoyed immediate on-ice success and off-ice adoration since signing with Detroit. That baggage—from the unambiguous and youthfully immature to the far more troubling yet murkier—remains a fundamental part of Kane's story and his legacy.
Once again, in that regard, his short tenure in Detroit has re-affirmed what we already knew—Kane is a hero but a complicated one. His personal history is an essential part of the story, but the questions it raises seem to have little bearing on the reception he receives from the fans whose imagination he has captured. And, as Sunday left beyond any doubt, those fans are abundant in Chicago and Detroit alike.
He can never be as beloved in Detroit as he was in Chicago without matching the winning. Both Kane himself and the Red Wing fan bases are too familiar with championship-level success to deny that. But a night like Sunday makes clear that he's every bit as exciting in red and white as he was in red and black.
In the end, the best summation of Kane's tenure in Detroit came the Friday before the game, from the active player who knows Kane best, Alex DeBrincat—another star to cross from one side of the rivalry to the other: "He just seems like Kaner to me. A lot of people doubted him coming into the season with the surgery and everything, but to me, this is normal. This is what I expected."
Patrick Kane is still Patrick Kane. And that means a lot to a lot of people.
Also from THN Detroit