Kane gives lift to sports scene in Windy City
CHICAGO – When Patrick Kane got to TD Garden in Boston on Thursday morning for the pregame skate, the Blackhawks’ leader in goals was focused on an assist.
From the moment Kane saw the kid wearing his jersey at Fenway Park as part of the Jan. 1 ceremony unveiling the U.S. Olympic hockey team, he got an idea. Kane was traveling to St. Louis with the Hawks but felt so moved by the gesture that he immediately contacted front-office personnel to begin tracking down the boy’s name.
A few phone calls later, and Kane arranged through the family to sign the jersey Thursday so the kid would have more than a memory to mark the occasion of making Kane’s Olympic moment official.
“The whole thing was very cool,” Kane said.
In a sports town where life has been decidedly uncool lately, how nice to see a local hero embrace his status and exceed expectations as a person and player. On the current landscape of Chicago superstars as 2010 begins, there is Kane and there is everybody else.
In every way, Kane has progressed slightly more in his development and plays on a better team than Derrick Rose of the Bulls. He has delivered on promise in a way Jay Cutler of the Bears didn’t. And with apologies to Carlos Zambrano and Mark Buehrle, neither the Cubs nor the White Sox has a product they can sell to the masses as reliable or marketable as No. 88.
Just 21, Kane leads the Hawks in scoring with 50 points and ranks sixth in the NHL behind the likes of stars Henrik Sedin, Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. The right winger has scored in 11 straight after picking up two assists in a loss to the Minnesota Wild on Saturday.
Nobody in the NHL has won more. The Blackhawks’ 31-10-3 mark represents the team’s best start since the 1971-72 season. Tuesday’s 4-1 win over the Wild marked the first time since March 1996 the Hawks had scored four or more goals in seven straight games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
The Bears can go away for a while now. The Bulls’ Vinny Del Negro watch quietly has resumed at the Berto Center, though maybe the Bulls will opt for the Bears’ definition of massive change and fire assistant Bernie Bickerstaff. No matter, the Hawks are here to entertain us long after pitchers and catchers report next month.
They no longer just hold the title as the NHL’s best young team. Many consider them the NHL’s best team, period. The puck-possession style that resembles the great Red Wings teams of recent past has as much to do with the Hawks leading the league in fewest shots against (24.1 per game) as blanket defense and suffocating goaltending.
“If we don’t win the Stanley Cup this year, we’re not going to be happy,” Kane said. “It’s a pretty bold statement but … we know we have a good group in here and we can’t get too full of ourselves.”
“It’s a fun group to coach and be part of,” coach Joel Quenneville said. “We have some quiet team toughness that probably makes us as competitive as we are.”
A big reason Kane has become more aggressive attacking the net near the halfway point of the season dates back to last summer. Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, Kane’s summer of 2009 forever will be remembered for the incident in a Buffalo taxicab that resulted in disorderly conduct charges. But to Kane, it already was sizing up as the offseason he reshaped his career – by reshaping his body.
The face of U.S. hockey still looks susceptible to acne and is surrounded by boyish, curly blond hair. But below the shoulders Kane added muscle to his 5-foot-10, 178-pound frame that has helped him maintain consistency he lacked his first two years. As a result, a more physical Kane can stay with the puck longer upon contact that allows more jaw-dropping passes and shots.
“I gradually got more power in my shot and can get those off quicker now due to upper-body strength,” Kane said. “I think I’m just growing into the game a little.”