On Sunday, Feb. 25th, the Chicago Blackhawks honoured one of their all-time great players—and one of the best Americans to ever lace them up—defenceman Chris Chelios in a lengthy jersey retirement ceremony.
However, you might have missed the event in light of another significant Blackhawks moment that happened the same night: the return of Patrick Kane.
After being traded to the New York Rangers at last year’s trade deadline and signing with the Detroit Red Wings earlier this season, Sunday was Kane’s first game back at Chicago’s United Centre in almost a year.
Kane’s return received as much, if not more fanfare than Chris Chelios’ ceremony.
Kane took three solo laps around the ice during the game’s first TV time out, showered with a raucous ovation from the home crowd throughout. He saluted the Chicago crowd during a two-minute tribute video, showcasing his many highlights from the Blackhawks’ glory days. He even got a shoutout from Chelios himself, who said that Kane “will go down as the greatest American-born player.”
After Kane scored the overtime winner to deliver his Red Wings the victory over his old team, it wasn’t much of a surprise to his name plastered all over the media throughout the night and into the next day – a fitting end to a storied momentperiod of his career.
Mark Lazerus—The Athletic’s Blackhawks writer—in particular waxed poetic over Kane’s heroics, first in his piece “Patrick Kane steals Chris Chelios’ thunder as ‘Showtime’ returns to Chicago” and again in another piece two days later that illustrated how Kane had effectively “passed the torch” to Chicago’s newly-minted franchise player, Connor Bedard.
Based on his comments, you’d never know that only three months and 19 days earlier, Lazerus had written a piece urging Blackhawks fans to not “lose sight of a painful past.”
Considering the deeply disturbing case brought against the Blackhawks by former player Kyle Beach, Lazerus lectured his readers that it was important “to be reminded that some of your heroes from those early 2010’s teams… allegedly bullied Beach and John Doe with homophobic taunts.”
Perhaps not keen to make things too heavy on his audience, Lazerus did make sure to soften the blow of the “lawsuit [that] might seem cruel if you’re a Blackhawks fan” pointing to the “good news” of the Blackhawks’ “bright future” that “put them in danger of becoming quite likable”.
So, what caused Lazerus—and the hockey world as a whole—to change their tune?
Probably that Kane signed with a new team on Nov. 28th, 2023, only 22 days after Lazerus’ infantilizing, self-gratifying piece. Holding strong would’ve forced the hockey media to do something quite difficult: to admit that Kane is not a player worthy of our respect and admiration.
As Lazerus himself so aptly put it, “the sheer number of people who failed Kyle Beach is staggering.”
As long as the NHL media, all of these people who promised to “do better” in their coverage when the investigation came to light, refuse to make difficult choices about who they celebrate, that number will continue to grow.
We can continue to honour Beach’s legacy by refusing to honour those of the people who sat idly by while it happened: especially Kane.
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You might think that it’s unfair to rope Kane in with the Beach case. With all that Beach says he went through with the Blackhawks, it might be unfair not to.
Beach’s case was exposed years after he had retired, partially due to the NHL’s culture of silence and how resoundingly the leadership group of the Blackhawks failed Beach. It became widely acknowledged that everyone in the dressing room knew what was going on.
Beach alleged that he was “subjected to humiliating trash talking by his teammates during scrimmages where coaches were present” and was “repeatedly” called gay slurs. It was alleged that in one incident during a training camp, a teammate asked if he “missed his boyfriend Brad [Aldrich],” his assaulter. Kane was an established star player on the Blackhawks throughout Beach’s time in the Blackhawks organization. Though Jonathan Toews’ deflecting comments were disgusting, Kane’s opinions on the matter were just as tepid. After the fact, Kane was playing as an Alternate Captain of the Hawks and said he “knew Kyle [Beach] pretty well from a couple different training camps.” Kane followed up by saying, “I feel bad for him, if that stuff happened.”
Kane also called Stan Bowman, the General Manager of the Blackhawks who was fired for his role in covering up the abuse, “a great man who did a lot of things for me personally.”
Even outside of the Beach case, Kane has a track record of ending up in the tabloids for all the wrong reasons.
On Aug. 9th 2009, Kane and his cousin were arrested and charged with felony robbery, criminal mischief and theft of services after beating up 62-year-old cab driver Jan Radecki in Buffalo, New York. Kane had provided $15 for a trip that came out to $14.80 and, after Radecki told them he didn’t have 20 cents in change, he punched the cab driver. Kane apologized to several people—his family, the Blackhawks, their fans—but not Radecki. Kane ultimately took a plea deal and had his charges reduced, avoiding jail time. Kane was also ordered to apologize to Radecki by the court.
Almost exactly six years later, Kane was the subject of a sexual assault investigation in Hamburg, New York. The District Attorney opted not to press charges, citing insufficient evidence. The case became even more convoluted when it came to light that the complainant’s mother had tampered with the rape kit, rendering it inadmissible as evidence, discrediting the complainant and effectively ending the investigation. To this day, it is impossible to say what exactly occurred on Aug. 6th, 2015.
At this point, let me be clear: Patrick Kane is a tremendously skilled hockey player who, by most measures, has had a fantastic career in the NHL. That said, even if you were to choose (wrongfully) to ignore his long and substantial patterns of deep-seated character issues, he still should not be considered the greatest American player of all time. Or, at least, it’s not so clear-cut.
There are a few other players whose names I’d like to throw into the ring for consideration.
Mike Modano is the first obvious candidate. Modano currently holds all of the career scoring records among American players. He has the most goals by an American-born player (561), the most points (1374), the most playoff points (146), the most games played (1499) and the most game-winning goals (92). With Kane coming off a hip replacement surgery in the offseason and his career drawing to a close, virtually all these milestones will be out of his reach.
While not American-born, Brett Hull is an American and almost undoubtedly has the highest peak of any American NHL player. Hull not only has more points and goals than Modano, but he’s probably had the most ludicrous goal-scoring stretch of any player not named Gretzky or Lemieux.
Between 1989-90 and 1991-92, Hull did in fact outscore Gretzky and Lemieux, scoring 72, 86 and 70 goals in those three seasons. Even after statistically adjusting for the high-scoring era Hull played in, those 86 goals remain the highest single-season adjusted goal total of all-time.
There is still one current player who is on-pace to come close to Hull’s 1990-91 total: Auston Matthews. It’s too early to call Matthews the greatest American player ever, but it might not be to call him the best. He’s the best goal-scorer in the NHL since Alex Ovechkin, and if he keeps up his current pace, could reach a level even Ovechkin has never hit.
Matthews’ scoring is even more impressive considering his high level of defensive play, an area where Ovechkin, Hull and Kane have all been unspeakably porous. All three have been regarded as some of the singularly worst defensive players in the game throughout their careers, while Matthews has received votes for the NHL’s top two-way player every year of his career save two.
All this is to say not that Kane is a bad player. There is certainly a strong argument that he is the best American player ever. But is it enough to wipe away everything else he has done off the ice, and is this the way American hockey wants to be remembered?
