For Patrick Kane, Buffalo is home. Chicago is where he became Showtime. Between those cities, separated by some 500 miles and two Great Lakes, is a place called Hockeytown.
It was once the promised land for the game's best players. Many of their jerseys hang in the rafters at Little Caesars Arena, alongside 11 Stanley Cup banners. History hovers. Lest you forget, look up: it means something to play for the Detroit Red Wings.
"It’s a great organization, run by one off the best players of all time, Steve Yzerman," Kane said Wednesday after signing a one-year deal with the Red Wings on the heels of offseason hip surgery. "There’s so many legends that have played for the franchise. You can go down the list, Gordie Howe, Nick Lidstrom, Yzerman, Fedorov, Datsyuk, Zetterberg, on and on. They call it HockeyTown for a reason, right?"
The name was born in the late '90s, when Detroit was the epicenter of the NHL. Around the time that the Red Wings won their third Cup in six years in 2002, Kane, who had outgrown youth hockey in Buffalo, moved to the Detroit area to play for AAA club Honeybaked and moved in with former Red Wing Pat Verbeek, a 500-goal scorer over a 20-year NHL career that had just come to an end. Kane was 14; Verbeek was filling his time by serving as an analyst on the Red Wings TV broadcasts and would often take Kane to games at Joe Louis Arena.
Kane loved the atmosphere at The Joe, which he said would become his "favorite road rink" as a pro. He loved the talent that spilled onto the ice one shift after the next; the Wings didn't have stars so much as constellations. He even loved the feathered logo on their chests: "I think the jersey's beautiful," said Kane, who would go on to spend two seasons with with the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor, which launched him to the OHL.
"I just always loved the organization."
He would learn to hate the Red Wings after being drafted first overall by the Blackhawks in 2007. But even then, Kane respected them. The Red Wings bounced the Blackhawks from the playoffs in 2009, before the Blackhawks returned the favor in 2013 amid a stretch in which they followed their rivals' path with three Cups in six years. For Kane and the Blackhawks, Detroit was "always a team we were striving to beat. Even organizationally, it was always someone we were looking up to."
In Detroit, something similar can be said about Kane. Much as he came to torment the Wings over nine All-Star seasons in Chicago, his talent earned begrudging respect. His hands, for one, dazzled like Datsyuk's. As Yzerman put it Wednesday, "Whether you're a Blackhawks fan or not, you admired Patrick Kane as a hockey player."
As the Blackhawks aged, their dynasty faded like Detroit's before it. Rebuilds often hit the best teams hardest. The Red Wings are finally coming out of theirs. When Yzerman was assembling his team this summer entering his fourth season as GM, he scanned the free agent market and thought, "Boy, a healthy Pat Kane could help us." He had already traded for Kane's close friend and former linemate Alex DeBrincat, filling the Wings' glaring need for a goal-scorer.
Kane, though, was coming off hip resurfacing surgery after playing hurt for most of last season and fizzling out with the Rangers following a long-rumored trade from the Blackhawks. No one knew how he'd respond.
The hip procedure was, and still is, an uncertain proposition. Kane, 35, opted for it because he was told by his doctor that he'd be "able to activate a whole bunch of muscles that I wasn’t using before," and because he "didn’t want it to be the reason I had to stop playing." He played last season on basically one leg, unable to shift his weight from side to side, hopping from left to right to do a simple crossover, a "straight-legged" skater limited to going one way, and still put up 57 points in 73 games. He put up 92 points in 78 games the season before that.
"I feel like I have a lot left to give," he said.
Kane responded to rehab well. He was cleared for contact four months after surgery and returned to the ice in September in a video circulated on social media. Kane and his agent started putting out feelers, and teams started calling. The Red Wings were one of them. Kane studied his suitors, watching their games on TV and imagining how he'd fit in. He was looking for a playoff contender "that you think you can help," he said. He kept an especially close eye on the Wings, who raced out of the gates led by DeBrincat and Dylan Larkin. One of the slickest players of his generation couldn't even play it cool: Kane said he kept checking in with his agent "just to see if Detroit reached out or if they’re calling, if they’re interested."
"I felt like I needed to be in a market where hockey is popular and we can get the city, the crowd excited," Kane said. "Hockey is a big thing in Detroit."
DeBrincat was another big factor. He and Kane are as close off the ice as they are on it, and they were often unstoppable in Chicago. Whenever Kane asked, DeBrincat spoke highly of the Red Wings' organization and the depth of this year's team. Detroit was tied for third in the East through 20 games, fueling hopes of returning to the playoffs for the first time in eight years. Kane could help revive the team he fell for as a teen.
Kane wound up interviewing with about 10 teams, sitting down with each GM and head coach over Zoom. He was drawn to Yzerman's "persona," he said, and Derek Lalonde's "knowledge of the game." He was intrigued by other clubs, too, but kept being tugged toward a place that felt like home, and to a team that felt like his.
"My heart was in Detroit," Kane said Wednesday night in an interview on TNT. "I would think about a place and I would be all about that place for a day and then my heart and my mind would, for some reason, always come back to Detroit."
The Red Wings were pleased with Kane's medical reports, and reassured by their own doctors. Yzerman thought it was "a worthwhile chance to take on a player that we think has a ton of upside." Kane has never dominated with size or speed, but with hockey sense and skill. As Yzerman said, "What makes him exceptional is his brain, and that part of it doesn’t really deteriorate." He sees the game in a way that others don't, and now he's got his body back. Kane says he's fluid on his skates again.
"For us, having another creative offensive playmaker is something that we could really use," said Yzerman.
Yzerman is bullish on Kane's ability to bounce back. "Forget 2010," he said. If Kane is even the player he was last year, the Red Wings will benefit -- "and we expect him to be better than he was last year, closer to the player he was two years ago." Kane is more bullish than that. Asked on TNT how confident he is in reprising the Patrick Kane of old, the superstar who lit up rinks across the NHL smiled and said, "Very confident."
"I know for a fact that I’m going to be better than I was last year," said Kane. "And even the year before, put up decent numbers, but I couldn’t really move laterally. A lot of my plays were just peg-leg, planted. It was a good decision (to undergo surgery). I’m happy with it all and very confident about getting back to a high level of play."
At the very least, Kane will elevate the Red Wings' power play, which has been crucial to their success thus far. Take him at his word, and they just added a game-breaker to skate with DeBrincat and Larkin on an All-American first line. No one really knows, and everyone wants to find out. But Yzerman believes the Wings "can compete for a playoff spot, and a healthy Patrick Kane gives us a better chance." With the close of Kane's career come a new beginning.
"They’re really building something that I think is going to have a lot of success here, so I’d like to be a part of that, especially starting this year. They’re in a playoff spot now, they’ve been playing really well of late, and I'd like to jump in there and help them make the playoffs," he said.
That would be something fresh around here, and refreshingly old. Kane was raised in Buffalo, and will have his jersey raised in Chicago. Detroit was a stop in between. He may have left, but the city never left him. Patrick Kane is a hockey player, who followed his heart back to Hockeytown.