SnogBlogy

The Athletic’s NHL Power Rankings for this week are live.

As the NHL season kicks nicely into gear, this is the time of year when NHL teams look inward to see what they really have (rather than what they thought they had at the start of the year).

Giddy optimism lasts about 10 days — longer if you’re off to a good start.

Advertisement

Sober reality sets in quickly if you’re not. Any roster moves usually involve some version of the ground-shifting Pittsburgh-Vancouver trade that saw Mark Friedman and Ty Glover swapped for Jack Rathbone and Karel Plasek.

I know. I didn’t see that one coming either.

But this year, one scenario will have a significant early-season outward ripple effect throughout the league, a chance for one team to make a potentially impactful addition, far in advance of the trade deadline.

And that’s because Patrick Kane is still out there, edging closer to a return; and as he edges closer to a return, he’ll start to narrow the list of suitors down to a manageable few.

So first, let’s ask the question: Is Kane a difference-maker at this stage in his career? If we conclude he isn’t, everything else that follows is just fluff anyway. I think he can be. I think he will be. And if you — or more importantly if teams around the league — agree with that assessment, then what sort of impact can he make on the three teams said to be the unofficial co-leaders for his services?

Let’s start with what presumably is motivating Kane to play at the soon-to-be age of 35 (his birthday is Nov. 19) and endure major surgery to make a return (a hip resurfacing, which is said to be less invasive than the hip replacements so many NHLers eventually need).

Three things actually. Partly, it’s because he wants to play. Partly, it’s because he wants to win. Partly, it’s because he wants to get paid.

Compensation is a factor because the three teams in the running — the Detroit Red Wings, the Buffalo Sabres and the New York Rangers — all have different challenges in terms of how much they can afford to pay him. A quick consultation with our friends at CapFriendly reinforces what a grim picture it is financially for virtually half the league right now. The cap for this season is $83.5 million. Ten teams are over — and are compliant with the cap only because of long-term injured reserve. Another 10 are within $1 million of the ceiling.

Advertisement

One of those is New York. Conveniently, both Detroit and Buffalo are in the bottom six.

Detroit has a cushion of about $4.4 million, Buffalo $8.8 million. Only Chicago has more — $11.05 million. Kane back to Chicago isn’t happening, but the Sabres can make it work, without any real shuffling — and probably the Red Wings could, too. New York would have to get creative.

On paper, shedding Barclay Goodrow’s contract would be the optimal solution in New York. Goodrow makes $3.641 million. He’s 30. The contract runs for this year and three more after this year. In his first three games under coach Peter Laviolette, he’s played 11 minutes, six seconds per night and has zero points and two shots on goal. Moving that contract will not be the work of a moment — and won’t happen without an incentive.

You almost wonder if the Rangers do end up winners of the Kane sweepstakes, if a return to Goodrow’s roots — San Jose, where it all started — isn’t the ideal solution, although San Jose isn’t exactly flush with cap space either ($1.625 million as of this week).

NHL teams’ capologists tend to be some of the most anonymous people in the organization, but they are doing swoops and twirls to make sure teams are compliant daily.

It’s a circus that colors virtually every team’s day-to-day lineup decisions, a distraction and not necessarily a good one.

But teams have shown an ability to jump through these hoops to make it happen, and in Kane’s case, it just feels as if it will be worth it.

So now let’s turn to need.

In New York, Chris Kreider has four goals for the Rangers through four games. No one else has more than one. You think the team is deep enough offensively with the likes of Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck in place, but look more closely and it falls off quickly after them. Blake Wheeler isn’t playing a major role yet — and maybe won’t.

Advertisement

More than anything, Kane — at his best, or whatever that might look like today — can have a galvanizing effect on all those around him. Panarin was at his best playing with Kane. Alex DeBrincat was at his best playing with Kane. Any number of B-level centers had the most productive stretches of their careers playing with Kane.

At the point where the Kane camp starts accepting overtures for their client’s services, that will be its primary selling point. Not only can our man help you, but he will also make whoever happens to land on his line more productive, as well.

Similarly, Buffalo didn’t exactly light it up offensively in the first three games, either, though Tage Thompson did get his first of the season in Thursday’s 4-3 loss to the Calgary Flames. Buffalo is Kane’s hometown, and Buffalo could probably use one more dose of winning experience to finally close the gap and make the playoffs after missing them every year since 2011. Then there’s this: No matter how long the Sabres’ 2023 first-rounder Zach Benson might stay up — he is one of three players drafted in June still in the NHL — what an opportunity it would be for the 5-foot-9 forward from Chilliwack, B.C., to see what it takes to play at the NHL level from a player who thrived as an undersized forward.

Detroit? Their three newcomers — DeBrincat, J.T. Compher and Daniel Sprong — have all been good. DeBrincat has five goals in four games; Compher has four points, Sprong has two goals. Detroit had 19 goals in its first four games.

Everyone could use help up front, though the Red Wings’ needs now might not be nearly as acute after what looks like a successful offseason. The Yzerplan finally taking shape?

Kane played 19 games for the Rangers last year as a rental but was clearly not himself physically. His surgery took place June 1, so four and a half months ago. Typical recovery time is supposed to be four to six months. So right around now, give or take a couple of weeks.

Video posted by his agency shows Kane skating well and working out hard. Right now, his agent, Pat Brisson, is doing most of the talking for him, but when Kane originally underwent the surgery, Brisson stressed that point — that this wasn’t just done as a last hurrah. He was doing it, and digging in on the rehab, because he wanted to play for a long time.

Advertisement

Which, presumably, should encourage all the teams bidding for his services that he isn’t just a short-term fill-in, but someone they can gameplan around moving forward. It means if the fit is right wherever Kane lands first, that team could have a potentially productive forward for years to come.

Counting Kane (and Malkin)

Kane began the season 41st on the NHL’s all-time scoring list (1,237 points in 1,180 games) but was passed this week by Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin (who started the year at 1,235 in 1,066 but had seven points in his first four games).

That actually moved Malkin up to two spots to No. 40 all-time — he also passed Peter Stastny in the first week and a half of the new season.

Next up for Malkin is Jean Ratelle at 39, and if Malkin can get 65 points this year, a reasonable assumption if he stays healthy, he’ll also reel in Al MacInnis, Alex Delvecchio and Jarome Iginla.

Malkin is two years older than Kane — a 1986-born. Only six players have ever crossed the 1,600-point threshold. Only 15 have crossed the 1,500-point threshold. If Kane plays until 40 or close to it, he could crack that elite club.

Vegas, baby!

Stanley Cup hangovers sometimes feel like more myth than reality. I’ve long believed the real hangover is for the team that finished as the runner-up. Like the champs, they too had to play four grueling playoff rounds. Unlike the champs, they didn’t end up spending the offseason celebrating.

So, Florida is muddling along at 2-2 — not bad when you consider they’re missing Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour. But Vegas? Vegas is off to a 5-0-0 start, which matches the best start of any defending champion since Edmonton in 1985.

Vegas’ win Tuesday over Dallas looked playoff-like. Very cat-and-mouse. Not a lot of high-danger chances either way. Commitment to defensive awareness on both sides. Thursday’s 5-3 victory over Winnipeg was looser — but the Golden Knights still found a way of getting past the Jets and goalie Laurent Brossoit who, coincidentally, was the Vegas starter in the opening-round series against the Jets in last year’s playoffs.

Advertisement

Brossoit was the odd man out in Vegas this summer; and if anyone was wondering how the Vegas goaltending duo — Adin Hill and Logan Thompson — would fare with heavier scrutiny on them, the early returns are very good. Collectively, only eight goals against in the first five games, Hill winning three of them. The Golden Knights are promising a rotation of sorts between the two — and good health willing, have the first month’s schedule plotted out. It only made sense to get Hill in against the Stars because at some point, the path to a return trip to the Stanley Cup Final figures to go through Dallas.

What’s admirable about Vegas is how it chugs through every adversity. Alex Pietrangelo has missed three of the first five games, while Alec Martinez only made his season debut versus the Jets. And even so, defensively, they don’t give up much. Brett Howden missed two games because of suspension, playoff MVP Jonathan Marchessault has only two points in five games. And yet still undefeated and still looking championship-caliber.

Impressive.

Is Tampa in trouble? At 2-2-1 to start the season, the Lightning have been just OK. It wasn’t a hard leap of faith to think the Lightning wouldn’t be the same team without Andrei Vasilevskiy to hold down the fort in goal. Vasilevskiy has, for a while now, been the tipping point on many nights when the Lightning weren’t the best team on the ice but won anyway because he outplayed his opposite number in goal.

The Lightning looked as if they’d be in line to add a goalie via trade or the waiver wire once the Vasilevskiy diagnosis came down — an eight-to-10-week absence recovering from back surgery — but they go their own way and love to be counterintuitive. Until last year when they faceplanted in the first-round loss to Toronto, and played mostly without Tanner Jeannot, who cost them five draft choices at the deadline, you couldn’t argue with their results, because their results were better than anyone else’s over a four or five-year span.

A lot of their operating principles mirrored those of Vegas — bidding goodbye to key pieces because they priced themselves out of their lineup. But at some point, you wonder if the slide back to the pack has begun.

Jon Cooper after Tuesday’s loss: “You’ve just got to keep plugging away. This league can humble you and you’ve got to have that mental fortitude to fight your way through it.”

Advertisement

Two nights later, they eked out a one-goal win over visiting Vancouver, ending a three-game streak. A small step in the right direction. Toronto-Tampa Bay on Saturday night should be fun — the first meeting since the Maple Leafs took out the Lightning in last year’s playoffs.

This and that

I always think the sign of a team that has a chance to win is that on the nights when they’re not very good, they find a way of getting the two points anyway. That’s Colorado in the early going. Not good against Seattle on Tuesday. Winners anyway. And by the way, if you count back to last season, that victory tied a record for consecutive road wins — 14 in a row, which last happened over a two-season span by the Buffalo Sabres (April 3 to Nov. 13, 2006), according to #NHLstats.

Then, on Thursday, they completely shut down Chicago and Connor Bedard, who looked as if he was tiring at the end of what presumably was a taxing five-game road trip, on every level, on and off the ice. Bedard makes his home debut Saturday. Only problem? Vegas is the visitor. It sure looks as if the three best teams in the league are in the Western Conference at the moment.

(Photo of Patrick Kane: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k3JvaWxjZXxzfJFsZmpoX2d9cLzAramim5tiuKK6xGaaqKakp66kwIynn6Vn