A musing on the uncertain optimism shrouding the Yzer-plan's latest marquee addition, three-time Stanley Cup champion Patrick Kane
A musing on the uncertain optimism shrouding the Yzer-plan's latest marquee addition, three-time Stanley Cup champion Patrick Kane
When we meet the protagonist of Unforgiven (1993's Academy Award winner for Best Picture), he is doubled over in a muddy barnyard, stumbling as he attempts to wrangle his hogs.
Will Munny—played by Clint Eastwood—is a retired professional assassin, inspired by the love and goodness of his since deceased wife to give that life up in favor of farming and raising his two children. However, financial instability on the farm (and perhaps his own yearning for one last adventure) drives Munny to pursue the bounty on offer for a pair of cowboys who disfigured a woman of the night at a brothel in the little town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming.
By the end of the film, Munny returns to his old ways. He resumes drinking, he returns to his life of violence, and, in the iconic final scene, he brings the posse that killed his partner Ned (played by Morgan Freeman) to vigilante justice.
Though his mission of vengeance proves successful, our first encounter with Munny is an ignoble one. There are no signs of his rowdy past, which has been replaced by dirt, swine, and a bad back in a not-so-subtle bit of symbolism.
It’s a bit like being 35 years old, having a credible case at being the most accomplished American hockey player ever, and sitting in a hotel ballroom to meet with the media on a Zoom call to discuss the fact that you’ve just recovered from major hip surgery and signed a contract with a new team, which happens to be the historic rival of the one with which you made your name.
Patrick Kane—three-time Stanley Cup champion, winner of the Conn Smythe, Hart, and Art Ross Trophies, all with the Chicago Blackhawks—experienced just that on Wednesday afternoon, when he was introduced as the newest member of the Detroit Red Wings.
As first general manager Steve Yzerman, then Kane, spoke Wednesday, both expressed optimism about the latest marquee addition to the so-called Yzer-plan, but the prevailing mood was of uncertainty. Yzerman didn't shy away from as much: “There’s definitely an unknown to this.” But espite the air of mystery, both player and executive provided reason for encouragement.
Kane pointed to how much better he feels today than he did at this time last year, saying, “I was straight-legged trying to make plays, and it’s tough. You play the game on one leg or trying to go one way, it’s very limiting.” He lamented that a year ago his version of crossing over from left to right “wasn’t even a crossover. It was more hopping on my left leg to get over to my right side last year.” Now, he is confident in his two-way mobility.
Meanwhile, Yzerman noted that Detroit’s doctors and performance staff were “really pleased with the results of the exam testing,” both in regards to the recovering hip and to Kane’s overall condition. He contended that “what makes [Kane] exceptional is his brain,” and it stands to reason that his hockey sense would age with grace, regardless of his physical condition otherwise.
“If he’s healthy, he can help us a lot,” said Yzerman, before offering that he perceives the 57 points in 73 games Kane put up last season as closer to a floor than a ceiling. “Even if he’s what he was last year, that’s not bad. We expect him to be better than what he was last year, closer to what he was two years ago [92 points in 78 games], then he could really help us.”
You’d expect nothing but optimism from the pair upon the solidification of their new professional union, but, in fact, the historical precedent is far from Kane’s favor as he looks to come back.
Nicklas Backstrom, Carl Hagelin, Ryan Kesler, and Ed Jovanovski are the most recent players to undergo the operation, and the returns are grim.
Neither Kesler nor Hagelin made it back to game action. Jovanovski made it 37 games into his comeback, before deciding to call it a career. Backstrom has played 47 games since his surgery at roughly half-a-point a game pace, well below his career average, and he is now in a state of limbo—having taken a leave of absence from the Washington Capitals but not yet taken his retirement.
Yzerman offered Scottish tennis star Andy Murray as an example of a hip resurfacing success story. It’s true that Murray made a full comeback from the operation and professes to have made major strides with respect to being pain-free on a day-to-day basis (a fact that shouldn’t be discounted). Still, Murray hasn't made it past the third round of a Grand Slam tournament since his surgery in 2019.
When asked what Kane can provide the Red Wings in their push to return to the postseason, Yzerman said, “the player he’s been, he’s a playmaking, creative offensive forward,” adding “that’s one thing we feel like we would benefit from.”
There’s no denying Kane’s offensive gifts, but it’s also impossible to ignore Yzerman’s introductory construction: “the player he’s been.” The promise of Kane’s future hinges on a version of himself that may or may not exist any longer.
Kane’s on-ice heights are unquestionable. He is a player who has scored overtime goals to win a Western Conference Final and a Stanley Cup Final in different seasons. If you were to make an all-star team of playoff performers in the 21st century, Kane would have to be on it, but he hasn’t played through a ten-game or ten-point postseason since his 2015 Cup run. And that was before the hip operation.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5U5W0L25J4[/embed]
Amidst his optimism, Yzerman stressed that “it’s ultimately up to Patrick when he feels he’s ready to go” and added that Detroit will “manage it any way we have to” when it comes to offering the veteran practices or games off should that appear necessary at some point along the road.
Both sides spoke with hope for the future on the first day of their marriage, and it's not that it's impossible for Kane to come back a more effective player than he was a year ago, but the need for hope only reinforces the prevailing uncertainty.
Then, there’s the peculiar reality of Kane crossing sides in the traditional Chicago-Detroit blood feud. Here, there is precedent in Kane's favor, via Chris Chelios—who went from public enemy to beloved blue line fixture in Hockeytown when he was traded from the Blackhawks to the Red Wings in 1999.
When speaking Wednesday, Kane downplayed the venom in the modern incarnation of the rivalry, which has undeniably simmered since Detroit went to the Eastern Conference after the 2012-13 season. He said that during his days in Chicago—which included a loss to the Red Wings in the 2009 Western Conference Final and a win in the second round in 2013—Detroit “was always a team that we were striving to be,” suggesting that the rivalry between the teams was more acute in the old Norris Division years of the 80s and 90s.
In explaining why he chose Detroit, Kane cited the presence of former Blackhawk teammate Alex DeBrincat and the sense that “they’re really building something that I think is going to have a lot of success here.”
He said that “throughout the whole thing, Detroit was there. Detroit was in the back of my mind. It almost felt like it was in my heart. When I was thinking about something else, I would come back to Detroit.” Kane also explained, “I felt like I needed to be in a market where hockey is popular and can get the city, the crowd excited. Hockey’s a big thing here in Detroit, so [I’m] excited about adding to that.”
Of course, far more fraught than a rivalry, there's the fact that Kane's comeback bid and signing with the Red Wings cannot be separated from his personal history.
In 2009, Kane pleaded guilty to noncriminal disorderly conduct charges stemming from an incident in which he punched a cab driver who couldn’t make 20 cents in change.
In August of 2015, months after he celebrated his third Stanley Cup, Kane was investigated by the Erie County District Attorney’s Office over an alleged incident of sexual assault. His accuser eventually decided to stop participating in the investigation, and the DA’s office elected not to press charges.
The 2021 investigation into the case led to Stan Bowman’s resignation as Blackhawks GM, Joel Quenneville (coach of all three championship Blackhawk teams and seemingly the man at the center of the decision to cover up what the team’s leadership knew about Aldrich’s crimes)’s firing from his job as coach of the Florida Panthers, and the NHL issuing the organization a $2 million fine. The investigation concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing from individual players.
Of these three incidents, only the first reached a definitive conclusion with respect to Kane's direct involvement, and we do not and will not know the specifics of his role in the latter two. Without doubt, though, his involvement in all three incidents makes it impossible to perceive him as an uncomplicated hero.
And, in this regard, Kane again also resembles Unforgiven's Munny, whose history as a hired gun leaves him an anti-hero. He is the film’s protagonist, but he is not a figure to emulate or admire, on this the movie is quite clear.
In the final scene, Munny makes explicit the sordid past that has been alluded to throughout the preceding action, spitting “That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.”
Kane's history is not as clear as Munny's; if it were, it would be easier to parse. But like Munny, certain stories from his past cannot be swept aside. Even beyond the matter of personal history aside, Unforgiven offers a portrait of the challenges in front of Kane as he attempts his comeback.
It is a movie about Munny’s ability to descend back into the man he once was, and on some level, he succeeds. He can return to the life of the outlaw gunfighter, and he does avenge his old partner Ned, but the road to achieving that end—like Munny himself—is far from heroic.
Munny labors over each foe he encounters. At times, he appears not just frail but sickly on his journey to vengeance. He is fragile and vulnerable. His work (vengeance) is ugly.
What does this mean for Patrick Kane? Well, rehab from hip resurfacing—at any age, much less in the dying light of his career—cannot have been easy or pain-free, but what’s to come will be harder.
Now, it won’t be enough for Kane to feel good in personal workouts and skates; he has to make this work over what remains of the 82-game grind that is the regular season in an NHL that has never been faster.
Kane is by no means the same as Munny, but there are narrative parallels. Like Munny, Kane is a star, and we will be watching for that reason alone, but Kane's story is not a work of fiction. His pain—on the morning after a game, on the bench between shifts, when absorbing a hit from a defenseman keen on taking a bite out of a aging superstar—won’t be a work of fiction. The non-fictional recent history suggests the odds are from his favor.
Maybe Patrick Kane can defy that historical record and play his way into Yzerman's ballpark estimation of value—somewhere between the player he was last year and the one he was two years ago. If he can, it would be something out of Western folklore.
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