VANCOUVER – To get to the ice in the National Hockey League, you have to go through the dressing room.
This routing complicates the Evander Kane trade.
For the miniscule price of a fourth-round draft pick, the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday acquired the 33-year-old Kane, an East Vancouver kid, to bring his combination of skill and snarl to a team that needs both.
Resurrecting his mercurial career with the Edmonton Oilers, Kane scored 24 goals two years ago before missing all of this past regular season due to major surgery in September on a variety of abdominal injuries. He also had knee surgery in January.
Kane returned this spring for the Stanley Cup Playoffs and scored four times in the Oilers’ first nine games before appearing to wear down after going 10 months without playing.
With his heft and disposition, his willingness to engage physically, the left winger makes a miserable opponent. Evander Kane is exactly the “player” the Canucks need.
But as a teammate, a piece of the dressing-room puzzle that strained former Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet, Kane has accumulated in his 16-year career more than a few red flags.
This is the Canucks team that was sabotaged this season — as publicly confirmed by hockey-operations president Jim Rutherford — by dressing-room dysfunction triggered by tension between J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson, who were the team’s core centres until Miller was traded to New York Rangers on Jan. 31.
Rutherford admitted the dressing-room culture, the leadership, was not as strong as management had thought. Rebuilding the chemistry of the Canucks is key to rebounding on the ice next season, which is seen internally (and everywhere else) as paramount to have any hope of retaining captain and superstar defenceman Quinn Hughes.
In a league of conformists, Kane has always stood out for individualism, which certainly worked against him at times in earlier career stops in Winnipeg, Buffalo and San Jose. The Sharks terminated his $49-million contract in 2022 not long after Kane’s 21-game NHL suspension for fabricating COVID vaccination documents. The two sides later reached an agreement to settle his contract grievance.
There is nothing wrong with personality; the NHL doesn’t have enough of it. And you have to admire someone with the conviction in himself to rent luxury vehicles on Edmonton road trips so Kane could be filmed arriving at the rink in a Lamborghini while Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl schlepped off the Oilers’ team bus.
Even on Wednesday, Kane couldn’t restrain himself and announced his own trade on social media before the Canucks had the chance to do it.
So, is this the right person for the Vancouver dressing room, where leadership is being recalibrated and the culture isn’t established and policed by McDavid and Draisaitl?
Vancouver general manager Patrik Allvin called it a “fair question.”
“I think the past is the past with Evander,” Allvin told reporters at Rogers Arena. “The last couple of years in Edmonton, I think he contributed a lot to the off-ice stuff and helping out... there. Having three kids here now, I think he has matured. I do believe that this gives us a chance and him a chance to see if this is a fit moving on here, and I'm sure hoping so after this year.”
Kane is in the final season of a four-year contract worth $5.125 million annually. His trade was a salary dump by the Oilers, who facilitated the former Vancouver Giant’s wish to play in his hometown.
“It definitely means something for us here to have a player that is on a one-year deal get a chance to come home after two back-to-back years in the Stanley Cup Finals, with experience playing with Draisaitl and McDavid and a good team in Edmonton,” Allvin said. “It means a lot to have an excited player coming here to Vancouver and provide the spark and juice we need here.”
Later, Allvin said: “We all know that there has been some stuff in the past. But again, I have no problem with personalities. As long as they perform on the ice and fit in with the team rules off the ice, I've no issues or concerns with players or what they're wearing and how they're driving to the games.”
Allvin said the Canucks did their “due diligence” on Kane, speaking to former teammates and staff. The GM is also confident that the team, under head coach Adam Foote and his new coaching staff, plus Canuck development coaches Henrik and Daniel Sedin, can build and manage the leadership group.
Despite significant, immediate backlash to the trade among fans, Rutherford, Allvin and Foote know what they’re getting into. They can Google Kane's name just like everyone else.
Wednesday’s trade is obviously a risk they are willing to take.
But it is a huge risk-reward move.
So was promoting the coaching-inexperienced Foote to replace Tocchet. So is bringing back Pettersson on his $92.8-million contract after a disastrous 45-point season that followed the centre’s no-show in the 2024 playoffs. So will be trading Friday’s first-round draft pick, with other assets, for another top-six forward, which the Canucks are trying to do.
As the Canucks go all-in on next season, the team certainly will be getting a highly-motivated Kane.
Finally healthy after missing half of Edmonton’s games over the last three years, Kane is playing for another contract, likely his final one in the NHL. He is four years removed from filing for bankruptcy in California, registering debts of $26.8 million.
“I think every team is looking to be harder to play against,” Allvin explained. “And for us, with the group we have here, when a player like this comes available... we felt we have a chance to upgrade our top nine, mid-six, and become a harder team to play against.
“Evander is one of those guys that you hate to play against, and you love to have him on your own team.”
We’ll see.
