patrick kane Archives

Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane have had the same parts of their anatomy singled out this summer.
These Blackhawks Buttheads, however, are no longer joined at the hip, just the posterior.
Of course, in Toews' situation, his rearguard action is considered nothing but positive.
In Kane's character assassination case, the jury is still out--and will be for the near future--on whether he will be labelled more of an asset or an ass.
Team Canada coach Mike Babcock delivered a unqiue perspective on Toews' abilities. As the Detroit Red Wings coach, as well, Babcock has seen Toews from all angles and obviously is liking the look he sees from the rear.
"He's a man-child, with a heavy butt, good for a hockey player," he said.
Who knew that on NHL scouting reports, in addition to the players' propensity to skate well, shoot accurately, defend fiercely and deke consistently, heavy butt was also a determining factor.

The legal process that we are suppose to be so proud to have takes a simple little mess and multiples it several times until this endless string of add-ons becomes a permanent pain in the addendum.
Drawn out in the media, the constant hammering of nuggets becomes a nutcracker. You can only compare it to the Chinese torture of dripping water on a person's forehead until he or she is driven insane.

(Since sex sells on the internet from what I've seen, please see attached picture. I admit it's better than the story, or at least more fixating and should sell better. Although it doesn't look like her forehead is being attended to, but rather that she's being forced to consume as many beverages as Patrick Kane did before everybody dropped the gloves in the cab).
You learn today what you already knew yesterday from unnamed sources--with a few new details added here or there to keep the story edging along.
So, watch out, here comes another water splatter headed your way. Patrick Kane in his brief NHL career has never been battered this badly and incessantly on the ice.

Blackhawks nation has to come to Patrick Kane's aid. Help him find the best way to say sorry to a 62-year-old cab driver who is willing to forget and forgive if he hears the magic word.
Team president John McDonough doesn't have time to run a marketing contest to find out what would be Kane's best apology, since it's needed in the next few days, so as always we are willing to lend a hand to a young man who has found himself befuddled by late hours and perhaps a taste of elixir to hurry him into a few blind alleys.
Well, here's a sorry poem from Erica German I found on the internet that Kane can consider in going on bended knee to cabbie Jan Radecki, who has asked for a direct apology from him. I think it fits the occasion with a bit of feisty hockey imagery hidden among the flowers.
"Sometimes sorry isn't good enough/ sometimes you have to be tough/ sometimes sorry is too hard to say/ sorry is a card you always have to play/sometime sorry is the wrong word/sometimes sorry is the only cure/sometimes the word sorry isn't always true/sometimes sorry is only for you/sometimes sorry is too big/sometimes sorry is a fib."

The Buffalo News is reporting Tuesday morning that, according to law enforcement officials, the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane is expected to agree to a plea deal in the next few days after he and his cousin, James, are indicted on a misdemeanor criminal charge.
The speculation is that the Kanes would plead guilty to something such as harassment or disorderly conduct. Or they might be granted an adjournment, the newspaper said, that could have the charges eventually dropped altogether if Kane doesn't get himself in more legal trouble in the next six months.
Cabbie Jan Radecki wants Kane to apologize directly to him, said Radecki's lawyer, Andrew C. LoTiempo. The Kanes were charged with robbery and criminal mischief after an altercation with Radecki in his cab in the early morning hours of Aug. 9.
"He does not want (the Kanes) to have a criminal record," LoTiempo said. "He does not want them to have any jail time. He does not want to ruin Patrick Kane's career. My client is looking for a direct apology to him, not much more."

Patrick Kane delivered, as expected.
No juicy details. No tearful remorse. Just a straightforward apology, as all of us correctly predicted, to the Blackhawks, their fans, his family and Buffalo for the pain he has caused through his actions.
Kane acknowledged in his prepared statement Monday before participating in the U. S. Hockey Orientation Camp in suburban Woodridge that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time at about 5 a. m. Aug. 9 in Buffalo when he and his cousin, James, had a run-in with a cabbie that led to charges against the Kanes of robbery and criminal mischief.
Kane added that while he knew "everybody wanted to talk about what happened in Buffalo," he would be unable to do so while the charges are pending. A grand jury will announce Thursday, according to the Buffalo News, whether to dismiss them, indict the Kanes or reduce the charges based on testimony it has heard.
Kane made sure to say that he apologized just for putting himself in a bad position: out at a time of the morning near a well-known neighborhood for nightclubs in Buffalo that has raised the speculation the 20-year-old could have been drinking alcohol.

Or..gasp..perhaps chasing women. The penalty for that will come later, Patrick, but you will pay dearly, my friend. And you will need another drink or two to ease your pain.

No mention of any pain suffered by cabbie Jan Radecki, who claimed the Kanes assaulted him, choked him and broke his glasses over a fare dispute. So Kane obviously will continue to contend that he didn't touch the cabbie, as his lawyer has said already.

There are parts of the story Kane obviously wanted people to know he doesn't have to apologize for. That may come to light some day--and then again, maybe not. Depends on where the court proceedings go.
A Buffalo News columnist already has charged that a source told him Kane began the night by drinking beer at Leisure Rinks.

But it showed Kane's heart is in the right place when he decides to include the city of Buffalo in his apology. That's a smart decision by him or his lawyer.

The Blackhawks certainly know how to create a diversion and take their fans collective mind off Patrick Kane's troubles. Just announce more bars, more food and more flat screens on a renovated 300 level, where getting high applies to every situation you can name, from the seating prices to the saucing.
Maybe they can continually play Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety," on a few of the screens just to give their acrophobic fans a queasy feeling, although I still believe that goalie Cristobal Huet will be in charge of that part of the menu.
And don't forget the possibility of those sanctions that could still be coming from the National Hockey League. There might be another bad moon rising if Marian Hossa collapses under investigators' questioning and admits he agreed to play seven years of his 12-year contract as long as the Hawks agreed not to MRI his shoulder with the torn rotator cuff.
Makes perfect sense to me. Everybody wins. That's how the perfect deal is suppose to come off.

Patrick Kane appears to be coming to Chicago next week for The USA Hockey Orientation Camp at Seven Bridges Ice Rink in Woodridge.
Whether he publically addresses his altercation last Sunday morning with a Buffalo cabbie remains to be seen.
The Daily Herald's Tim Sassone is reporting Thursday morning that the Kane hearing that was scheduled for Monday has been moved back to next Thursday in Erie County, N. Y. Kane lawyer Paul Cambria wanted the hearing delay, Sassone said, so that Kane could attend the three-day camp that opens Monday.

The Buffalo News added that a grand jury has begun looking at the Kane case on Thursday. The grand jury could make the hearing moot if it decides to dismiss charges, indict the Kanes or order the matter to remain in Buffalo City Court just on the misdemeanor charges.
If Kane follows Blackhawks president John McDonough's lead, he could say that he can't give any comment while the matter is being adjudicated.
That's not going to stop the cameras and tape recorders from showing up en masse Monday if Kane is in the Chicago area.

If a Buffalo grand jury either dismisses or reduces felony charges Thursday against the Blackhawks' Patrick Kane and his sidekick cousin in this buddy movie gone bad, a pending resolution that is generally expected, even a welcome outcome for them will only bring us right to the end of an exciting Chapter 1 in the Kane Chronicles.
Maybe the pair can celebrate by going to see the summer blockbuster movie "The Hangover," laughing off their night of infamy. But they should know, like Harry Potter before them, there will be numerous sequels about Patrick Kane to portray how he grows up and whether he'll grow up--two different camera angles.
Even a legally innocent Kane will be a marked man and whether the 20-year-old lives happily ever after is likely to become a long-running reality show where the camera will intrude on him. The public and media love nothing better than to pick at sores and scabs, hoping they can run red and enjoy the bloodbath.

While eagerly awaiting charges to be dropped in the instructive Patrick Kane case, and anticipating revelations that cabbie Jan Radecki injured himself beating his head against his taxi window once he realized that he would probably always live and eventually die in Buffalo, we can all join Kane in viewing this adventure as a learning experience.
Craig Custance of The Sporting News and Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News both offer unique, insightful spinoffs on what just went down. They emphasize that Kane might not be totally off the hook in the court of public opinion, and since both stories are sympathetic to Kane's plight, that should imbue them with the power of credence.
Custance perceptively wonders if Kane hasn't privately violated Blackhawks president John McDonough's strict and conservative view of "The Blackhawk Way."

Patrick Kane has already been found guilty: of hubris, which is a volatile mix of conceit, vanity, arrogance and haughtiness.
Who convicted him? Not you and me, who are perhaps guilty of the same. Not a court, where the core problem of self-centeredness can never be fixed.
Kane condemned himself. He pled to the charges of excessive pride in his own words within the last week.
Just days ago, when he attended a ceremony in Buffalo with the mayor to celebrate building improvements to his childhood ice rink, Kane was ensnared in a web of trying painfully to describe himself as a bigshot in Chicago and a regular guy in Buffalo.
That split personality would soon surface in a violent way, perhaps fueled by alcohol since it was a wee-hour meltdown.

Patrick Kane has been holding out on us. Who knew he could hit anyone, angrily or otherwise?

Allegedly, of course. There will be many skeptics unless the cabbie has video.

And, judge, by the way, there are quite a few witnesses from last season at United Center who will swear on a Bible this angelic-looking skating demon has never hit anything more than an odd indentation in the ice once in a while.

C'mon, your honor, watch the tape of the Blackhawks season. The kid's not guilty. Did you see one time he went out of his way to whack anybody? This isn't Mike Peluso here. Kane might have an evil twin. Hopefully his lawyer looks into this being an identify theft.

If sources were horses, rumors would either run true to form, break down like nags in mid-flight on shaky legs or pull up short as the lame longshots they started out. Here comes one spinning out of the turn and you be the judge of its staying power.

It's hard to say how much credence to put into a Blackhawks source who has supposedly told The Fourth Period magazine that winger Martin Havlat's priority is remaining in Chicago to play again next season, and to make that happen, he might be willing to take less money in a long-term contract.

And, oh yeah, TFP speculates the deal could be announced as soon as next week, although Havlat officially isn't an unrestricted free agent until July 1.

I have sent a request on Twitter to Havlat and his agent, Allan Walsh, to respond, but so far haven't heard back. Walsh posted that he had an early-morning flight Friday from Pittsburgh to L. A. to attend to family business and Havlat is apparently gallivanting around Dubai with the girlfriend, according to his posts on Twitter, ready to swap the ice for the desert.

He wasn't too busy, however, in Dubai to recommend that his followers link onto Twackle for the latest sports news. Some skeptics have wondered if somebody wasn't impersonating the Hawks star, but then why would Walsh have a link to Havlat's site on his Twitter account? No one is going to impersonate an agent.

And, let's get real, how huge a star is Havlat? Apparently Tony La Russa is too important to have his own Twitter account, but Havlat is just a guy in the big picture, although he now has grown to 3,225 Twitter followers waiting with bated breath to hear the word that he's willing to play for just $4.5 to $5 million this season, less than the $6 million he made last year as the team's top scorer.

At least that's what TFP is claiming the source is selling them.

That would make Havlat eligible immediately for sainthood in Chicago ahead of Mother Teresa. When's the last time a pro athlete spurred his club to the playoffs, only to say afterward that he'd love to take a pay cut just to stick around.

Sure, and Carlos Zambrano is never, ever, going to go off his rocker again.

Steve Konroyd always showed good instincts as a Blackhawks defenseman, and so when he senses that there could be an opposing team preparing an offer for restricted free agent center Dave Bolland, you better pay attention to a guy with bloodhound sniffing abilities.

"Hopefully, somebody doesn't make too strong an offer for Bolland," said Konroyd, who is a keen-eyed hockey observer for Comcast broadcasts and lives in suburban Chicago. "That's one risk I see with our restricted free agents."

General manager Dale Tallon would have the chance to match any offer, of course. But if an opponent wants to throw a wrench into Tallon's offseason tip-toeing through this salary-cap minefield, dropping an unexpectedly large bid on Bolland could be a sticking point.

If the money bid is overwhelming for someone such as Bolland, who earned $887,000 last season, Tallon would be put in a tight squeeze. To pay or not to pay? That could be the expensive question.

"You have to make very judicious judgments as a team," Hawks president John McDonough said this week.

The Hawks would get draft picks in exchange for losing key restricted free agents such as Bolland, Kris Versteeg, Cam Barker, Ben Eager or Troy Brouwer, but Konroyd would much prefer that most of those assets remain. Bolland and Versteeg both contributed 12 points in the postseason, tying for fourth best on the club.

Konroyd also suspects aggressive play out of Tallon in the next few months. While Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith are all contractually committed to the Hawks for 2009-10, he expects Tallon to attempt signing all of them to extensions this offseason and addressing next offseason's salary cap worries right now.

"I think he will try to do deals now with valuable guys like that," Konroyd said of these core players. "Their value can only go up."

Next year the price for Kane, Toews and Keith skyrockets if the team succeeds again, as everybody in Chicago hopes. Fitting them into the salary structure is a must-do now, not later.

There is no way to lose better than this. The Blackhawks aren't as good as the Detroit Red Wings, but in Wednesday night's 2-1 overtime loss they were just as feisty and just as competitive and won an enormous amount of respect if not a trip to the Stanley Cup championship.

That's never good enough, of course, since winning games has no adequate substitute, but it will have to suffice for another long hot summer of what might have been at the United Center. The finals begin Saturday when Pittsburgh and superstar Sid "The Kid" Crosby try to stop the Wings from repeating as champions.

Goalie Cristobal Huet, doubted after a shaky Game 4 performance, played the game of his life at Joe Louis Arena, one that bodes well for a promising future for the young Chicago club. His right-pad kick save against Johan Franzen in the waning seconds of regulation will always be shown through the years as a Blackhawks highlight,a memory that will never fade.

The Western Conference finals could have ended right there. But Huet refused to let it happen that easily in Game 5, raising his pad to keep on playing a while longer as he laid out prone on his stomach, vulnerable to whatever came his way and yet unwilling to surrender.

However, in overtime, Detroit's dashing Darren Helm sustained the energy that he had brought to the game the whole night. The little sparkplug, who is proof that size is relative even in a game of hit-and-hit-back, scored the winning goal for a 2-1 decision in overtime.

He was in the right place at the right time, just right of the crease, as Tomas Holmstrom's shot from the left side deflected his way and didn't permit Huet enough time to cover both sides of the players' strangling pressure.

"We had a lot of shots on net and he did a really good job,'' Helm said in praise of Huet.

As for himself, Helm humbly acknowledged he's not a household name. "A lot of guys are relied on on this team that aren't big names,'' he said.

The Hawks need more guys like that.

Huet stopped 41 shots in regulation play, giving up just a Daniel Cleary deflection off a shot from the point by defenseman Brett Lebda with 13:52 to go in the third period. That seemed enough to carry the Wings to victory until Patrick Kane scored his first goal of the series off his sheer talent.

Seldom a factor in the series as he got caught up in trying to play too much of an individual game on the rush, this time Kane used speed down the right side of the offensive zone and elevated a backhander past the left shoulder of goalie Chris Osgood. The beauty of it was breathtaking.

With just over seven mintes to play, the Hawks suddenly had a chance to bring a Game 6 back to Chicago Saturday.

Newspapers can't be dying. Otherwise, how would sports teams be able to post incendiary bulletin board material?

Try posting You Tube or ESPN SportsCenter to your board and see how tough it is to get the pin through the screen.

Let's hope the Blackhawks are reading the Detroit papers Wednesday morning. It should be all they need for pre-game preparation for a possible elimination in Game 5 Wednesday night at Joe Louis Arena.

Coach Joel Quenneville won't require any strong motivational speech as long as the Hawks notice how the Detroit News gleefully points out the way Johan Franzen treated Patrick Kane like dirt and skated away smirking about it.

You Tube has a clip of the incident in Detroit's 6-1 wipeout of Chicago Sunday at United Center. Goaltender Chris Osgood had just made a Game 4 stop and Kane, non-confrontational as usual at the side of the net, skated meekly away.

Franzen comes up to him behind the net and pulls out Kane's dangling mouthpiece and flings it away. Kane just skates away, although it appeared the cheek of the Indian symbol on his chest was flush with embarrassment.

Supposedly, Kane had been talking trash and that precipated Franzen's actions.

Granted, Kane is no enforcer and doesn't want to get his lily-white hands dirty. But there is nothing that says he can't push back. While there is no need for Kane to club Franzen over the head with his stick, he does need to stand up for himself and not let others do it.

But, as usual, a picture is worth a thousand words.

"It was fun," Franzen told Detroit reporters, "but I won't do it again."

If such bullying doesn't get the Hawks to respond with smart aggression Wednesday night, savvy enough to bring the series back to Chicago for Game 6 Saturday, then there is no hope left for this upstart team.

Oh, by the way, read the Detroit Free Press, too, boys. They are stewing about a possible long wait between beating the Hawks and starting the Stanley Cup finals.

The paper is noting that the NHL might audible and have Game 1 against Pittsburgh begin Saturday at Joe Louis Arena.

Eh, isn't that when the Wings are going to be busy playing the Hawks in Chicago?

In Detroit, the party is being planned before the Hawks have been dismissed. Kane and his teammates need to respond Wednesday night like the party crashers they can be.