Patrick Kane, just as he had 581 times before, flipped a puck into the air and carefully balanced it on his stick.
As the horn blew to end warmups at the United Center, Kane skated over to a throng of Blackhawks fans clustered at the bottom of section 102.
He flipped the puck over the glass and into a sea of reaching hands, then hustled off the ice and down the tunnel to prepare for his 582nd regular-season home game.
And in that sea, Ashley McGee and her fiancé, Ryan, caught what proved to be the final end-of-warmups puck toss of Kane’s legendary Hawks tenure.
“I was standing there, tears welling up in my eyes, taking in the whole scene,” McGee said. “He skated over and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he still has it [on his stick].’ We seemed to lock eyes for a second, or at least I thought so — he was clearly taking in the whole scene, as well. Thankfully, my fiancé reached up and grabbed it.”
“When we started walking back to our seats, I realized how special this might be.”
The greatest Hawks player, greatest American hockey player and one of the greatest NHL players of all time was traded Tuesday to the Rangers for two draft picks.
The Hawks’ new management wanted to get whatever they could for a player on an expiring contract, as usual — it just so happened that player was Kane. Kane, meanwhile, wanted to go to the Rangers and the Rangers only. Thus, this outcome.
And whether by trade, free agency or retirement, this outcome was always coming. It was coming in 2007, when the Hawks drafted Kane first overall at the draft in Columbus. It was coming in 2010, when Kane scored the goal nobody saw in Philadelphia to win his first of three Stanley Cups. It was coming in 2015, when the Hawks signed Kane to the eight-year, $84 million mega-contract that will finally expire this summer.
That fact doesn’t make what happened Tuesday any easier to comprehend. Patrick Kane — the man who won over a city, lifted up a franchise and changed the sport all while wearing red — wearing blue? It’s an absurd idea.
“I don’t think it’s going to sink in until I see him in another sweater,” McGee said, expressing the collective thoughts of thousands of fans.
But this doesn’t change the legacy he leaves behind in Chicago. And what a legacy it is.
The aforementioned three Cups. Nine NHL All-Star selections. A Hart Trophy, an Art Ross Trophy, a Calder Trophy and a Conn Smythe Trophy. A stat line of 1,161 games (third-most in franchise history) in which he recorded 446 goals (third-most) and 779 assists (second-most), adding up to 1,225 points (second-most).
His passing ability made the Hawks’ dynasties click. Few others could dream of delivering a saucer pass five inches off the ice, through traffic, onto the stick of a fast-moving teammate inside the opposite faceoff circle. Kane could do it 100 times out of 100.
His offensive instincts and vision put him in the right spots to be able to take advantage of that skill. His soft hands and excellent-in-its-own-right shot forced opponents to respect him and let those passing lanes open up. His quickness and deceptiveness in tight spaces gave him room even when those defenses covered him well.
His signature celebration — left knee bent forward, right knee hovering above the ice, right arm fist-pumping downward — became a defining image of “Showtime,” as Kane was nicknamed, and the Hawks as a whole.
Even at 34, Kane still has the vast majority of those talents at his disposal. His peripheral (in a good way) style has long avoided much of the physical beating other star forwards incur, and even the hip injury that has recently nagged him stopped slowing him down when he decided this month he wanted to prove it wouldn’t. In his final four Hawks games, Kane scored seven goals, tied for his most ever in any four-game span.
All the while, the casualness with which Kane seemed to do everything completed his image.
Nothing ever daunted him — not the simultaneous enormous expectations and serious skepticism he received entering the league as a 5-10, 160-pound teenager, not that passing lane filled with sticks and certainly not the thought of making the long-struggling Hawks an NHL dynasty.
“We want to bring a championship to this city,” a rookie Kane said in a December 2007 interview with the Sun-Times. “And if we stick to the game plan, we’re going to help this team win.”
It turned out he really could make it seem that simple.
