#pk-wings

The Red Wings began Kane’s career as an obstacle, an old-guard powerhouse the upstart Blackhawks had to topple in pursuit of championships. Now they have become the home for that second act, and everything that comes with it.

Kane is hardly the first legendary player to choose Detroit for some of his twilight years in the league.

In the early 2000s, the Red Wings became a popular late-career home for future Hall of Famers such as Modano, Dominik Hasek, Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.

The franchise Kane signed with back in the winter of 2023 was in a very different place as the juggernaut those other players joined. Detroit had missed the playoffs in seven straight seasons while going through a grueling rebuild. If Kane wanted the quickest road back to the Stanley Cup, other destinations would have made more sense.

But the Red Wings had their own appeal. As a result of that rebuild, they were assembling a collection of young talent that Kane wanted to be a part of. They also had acquired Alex DeBrincat, a former teammate, linemate and close friend of Kane’s — and, Kane has said, a frequent point of contact while he was going through his decision process.

Maybe most intriguing were the market and its fan base. After all these years, Kane is still a showman, and a showman needs the right stage.

“They call it Hockeytown for a reason, right?” Kane said at his introductory news conference. “I felt like I needed to be in a market where hockey is popular, and it can get the city, the crowd excited. Hockey’s a big thing here in Detroit, so kind of excited about adding to that, and just playing my game and hopefully bringing a lot of excitement to the city and the fans and the organization and my teammates.”

By the end of the season, that was borne out. The Red Wings ultimately fell short of the playoffs via a tiebreaker, but their late-season push to get into the field featured some of the highest-stakes hockey Little Caesars Arena has seen. Kane was a big part of that, finishing the year at almost a point-per-game pace with 47 points in 50 games, including 20 goals.

He held up physically in the wake of a rapid recovery from hip resurfacing, and he clearly had something left in the tank. The only question was whether his time in Detroit would be limited to proving that and then moving on, or if it would be more lasting.

Even Kane didn’t seem to know the answer, speaking in the past tense after the season about how “it was fun to be a Wing” and that he would “definitely have some memories to last me a lifetime.” He didn’t close the door to a return, but after bouncing from Chicago to a 26-game rental stint with the New York Rangers and then to Detroit, he spoke of perhaps wanting some stability in the form of a longer contract. That felt like a potential sticking point.

Instead, on the eve of free agency in 2024, he decided to reverse course, signing a one-year, incentive-laden deal to remain with the Red Wings. And then, a year later, he did it again.

In the span of a year, Detroit had gone from a short stop on Kane’s journey to something closer to a new home — even if only a year at a time.

“I said that at first, because that’s just kind of what you think in the moment, right?” Kane said this fall. “And then as you study things, and whether it’s maximizing your value or keeping your options open, things like that, I think it made sense to do a one-year deal. And then we thought it worked pretty well last year. I think it worked well for myself and the team. And I think it was, after the season, just something we wanted to explore again. … This is my third year here, so it’s kind of more comfortable now, and settling in for sure. Always felt like I was really part of the team since I came here, they welcomed me with open arms, so it’s been a good fit, and definitely was the spot I wanted to come back to.”

Kane has elevated the Red Wings in two key ways.

First, and most obvious, has been on the power play. In the three seasons before Kane arrived, the Red Wings had been a bottom-half-of-the-league outfit with the man advantage. In 2022-23, they finished 17th at 21.1 percent. The year prior: 26th, at just 16.3 percent.

Adding DeBrincat in 2023 was already helping by the time Kane signed, but his arrival solidified Detroit as a group to be feared on the power play. His vision and playmaking ability are among the very best in the sport, and that impact was felt quickly alongside some outstanding scorers in DeBrincat, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond.

That first season with Kane, Detroit end with the ninth-most effective power play in the league, converting on 23.1 percent of their opportunities, then posted a top-five finish last year at a dazzling 27 percent clip. This season, the Red Wings entered Sunday games sitting seventh at 24.5 percent.

That rise can’t be attributed to just one player, of course, as Detroit now has five legitimate stars on its top unit. But Kane certainly has a knack for maximizing them.

“The way he plays now is pretty identical to the way he played in Chicago,” Red Wings defenseman Ben Chiarot said. “You can see, still, when he has the puck on his stick, guys always kind of hesitate to go to him, just because he’s head up the time, puck on a string. He never looks down. He’s a tough guy to defend against because of that: he’s just so poised with the puck and he sees the whole ice. He knows where everyone is.”

The second major elevation is with his impact on a young team.

The Red Wings haven’t made the playoffs since 2016. That was Dylan Larkin’s first season with the team, and long before Seider, Raymond or Detroit’s many other young players were in the NHL. That’s one reason Kane’s ability in the clutch is so important, with a roster full of players who don’t have his experience in pressure situations.

Beyond that, though, many of the current generation of players grew up watching Kane. That makes him uniquely suited to make an impression on his young teammates now with his approach.

“Personally for me, just off the ice, the way he carries himself every day, leads by example,” Raymond said. “The thing that I’ve been impressed with the most is just how his love for the game is so strong, and he shows up every day. He’s 37 now, and achieved basically anything you can achieve as a hockey player, but still very curious, wants to learn new things. … He’s awesome, and I’m very happy and fortunate to be playing with him.”

Love for the game can often be a cliché. In Kane’s case, it’s more likely an understatement. Walk up to him and ask about any player in the league, any facet of the game, and chances are you’re going to get a deeply thoughtful answer. He’s a hockey nerd, plain and simple.

Last year, when he was nominated for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to ice hockey, Kane estimated that he skated or played hockey up to 350 days of the year growing up. To this day, he still views himself as a fan.

“Obviously it’s entertaining to watch games, but at the same time you can learn a lot of different things when you’re watching different players or different teams,” he said. “So I guess it’s maybe both those things, where you’re watching as a fan and you’re watching certain players for the entertainment aspect, but also trying to learn as much as we can too, to better yourself.”

Chiarot observed that kind of passion as a common thread among the first-ballot Hall of Fame-caliber players he has played with, in Kane’s case spilling beyond the game itself and into equipment, sticks and history. James van Riemsdyk, who has known Kane for 20 years dating back to the U.S. National Team Development Program, commented that for all of Kane’s talent, “his kind of biggest asset is just how much he loves his game and loves working on his craft.”

And while some of that passion can certainly be seen in games, it’s perhaps more important outside the public eye.

This preseason, when the Red Wings were still in the installation phase with their structures and systems, Red Wings coach Todd McLellan was debriefing with his team on the ice about something they had just worked on in practice, when Kane raised a point to the coach.

“If anybody sees things and anticipates things really well, it’s him,” McLellan said afterward, before offering a lighthearted counterpoint. “The problem right now is … he’s playing chess. We’re trying to introduce something and he’s seven plays ahead of everybody else, and we’re just trying to keep it simple, like checkers. I keep telling him, ‘We’ll get to that. We’ll get to it. Great question, we’ll get to it.'”

On that day, perhaps Kane was a few too many steps ahead. But in the big picture, that kind of moment speaks to the less-seen value he brings the Red Wings in these twilight years.