Evander Kane is going to keep marching to his own band

National Post

4 hours ago

If you thought Evander Kane was going to be anything but well-spoken and at times defiant in his opening meeting with the Vancouver media horde, we're not sure about you.
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Kane was always going to be thus. He has never been shy to answer a question, even on a topic he would rather not discuss. He has always been brash and confident.
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That's the player that Vancouver Canucks GM Patrik Allvin traded for on Wednesday. And that's the player who stood at the podium and took questions from reporters on Thursday.
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Dressed in a sharply tailored tartan suit, freshly arrived from the airport, Kane was relaxed and upbeat about playing for his hometown team. And he wasn't shy about any question put his way.
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He is, of course, delighted to be back in the town where he first learned hockey, where he was a junior hockey star before embarking on an NHL career that is nearly 900 games long. When it became clear that his time in Edmonton was coming to an end, Kane was quick to suggest Vancouver as a preferred destination, and was pleased to discover that the Canucks themselves had similar interest.
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He made sure to name-check the two most important Canucks.
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'I don't think we're too far off,' he declared about where his new team is in its winning cycle, casting aside any ideas the Canucks are pondering yet another re-build. 'Obviously, we have a superstar defenceman (in Quinn Hughes). We have an incredibly talented forward in Elias Pettersson.'
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Throughout his career, he's been noted for playing an abrasive, hard-hitting style. If he has pissed off opposing fans, that means he's done something right, he grinned.
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'I've played that style ever since I was eight years old here in Vancouver, so nothing's going to change. Nothing's really changed when it comes to how I play and what I bring on the ice. I'm very confident in what I can do,' he asserted.
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And what he can do is still a bit of question mark. Only once has he played a full schedule — the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. Twice he has come close — one in San Jose, and again in 2023-24. Otherwise, his campaigns have been marked by some kind injury, sandwiched at least by plenty of goals and hits.
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But the wear and tear was so great over the years that he had a series of surgical procedures last September that knocked him out of the entirety of the 2024-25 season — ironically coming on the heels of a year when he played nearly the whole schedule. He was able to return for the playoffs and was a reasonably effective player, although in the final series he struggled to fill the gap left by winger Zach Hyman.
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His full-year absence from the roster and his return in time for the playoffs has brought the scrutiny of the NHL down on the Oilers about whether they used long-term injured reserve beyond the spirit of the rule, and further reports suggest this now-standard method of using LTIR in-season to create super squads for the playoffs may become more stringently regulated in a new collective bargaining agreement.