Evander Kane’s next NHL stop may come with the usual questions about his game, but this summer has added another layer: the noise around him keeps growing.
Kane has bounced around the league enough to know that changing teams is nothing unusual. Plenty of players move from place to place, even the great ones.
But with Kane, the exits have rarely been clean. His departure from the Edmonton Oilers did not come with any obvious blowup, yet that has not been the pattern over the rest of his career.
The early signs showed up with the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets organization, where a very public clash with teammates made it clear things were not exactly stable in that room. A trade to the Buffalo Sabres came next, along with other extracurricular activities. His time in Buffalo did not last even two full seasons before he landed with the San Jose Sharks.
In San Jose, Kane found a strong fit on the ice during the team’s previous championship window. He produced in the playoffs and played well enough to earn a long-term contract. That deal was later voided after a breach of Covid-19 protocols, though the possibility of buyer’s remorse in the Sharks organization was always part of the picture too.
His Edmonton run brought a very different kind of spotlight. Kane was electric in the 2021-22 Stanley Cup Playoffs, scoring 13 goals and looking like the elite shooter he had been early in his career.
For a stretch, the off-ice concerns that had followed him around did not seem to surface. As the source material puts it, “it's amazing how winning diminishes those concerns.”
If not for the injury he suffered early the next season, there’s a real chance he would have remained a top-six fixture for the Oilers for the rest of his career.
Instead, he came back later that season and was still useful, bringing speed and grit. But the shot no longer had the same snap, and the same explosiveness was not there.
Kane was part of the Oilers teams that came up short of the Stanley Cup, but by then he had shifted into more of a supporting role than a centerpiece. His offense also no longer did enough to offset the penalties that continued to follow him, and when he was traded to the Vancouver Canucks, he was viewed as a declining asset.
There is still a case to be made that a team signing Kane now would get something useful from him. He showed elite skating speed in Vancouver, and the talent has not disappeared entirely.
But this offseason has also brought a different kind of distraction, possibly made worse by being without a contract. Online fights with media personalities and vague posts about exposing hidden truths around the NHL have only fueled the sense that he is leaning into drama.
That is the kind of baggage a team chasing the Cup usually wants no part of. Edmonton, at least, never had those concerns spill into public view, and that remains the best version of Kane for Oilers fans to remember. If another team does decide to take the gamble and sign him this season, there is a real chance it will regret the decision.
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