Kane will net Giant honour before trying to knock off Canucks
Ex- WHL star’s 48- goal year a Vancouver record
Evander Kane is having his own Evander Kane Bobblehead Night on Wednesday, and even he finds it amusing that his former junior team, the Vancouver Giants, is doing this for him.
“I still could be playing for them right now,” Kane chuckled over the phone from Winnipeg. “It’s crazy when you think of it that way.”
Crazy good, of course. Kane blasted through the Giants’ organization like a comet. He played for them in the 2007 Memorial Cup final as a 15- year- old midget call- up, scored 48 goals ( still a team record) as a 17- year- old, and was drafted fourth overall by the Atlanta Thrashers in 2009.
He made the Thrashers that fall and now, at the age of 20, he’s in his third National Hockey League season, a 26- goal scorer on the Winnipeg Jets, the transplanted Thrasher franchise.
Kane is the same age as current Giant defenceman Neil Manning and goaltender Adam Morrison.
They’ll be on the ice at Pacific Coliseum tonight when Kane drops the puck between the Giants and Tri- City Americans at 7 p. m. and is inducted into the team’s ring of honour. On Thursday, Kane will be on the ice at Rogers Arena, trying to help the Jets take care of business against the Vancouver Canucks.
“The Giants have done a great job in remembering past players and honouring them,” said Kane, born and raised in Vancouver.
“It’s a privilege and an honour to be one of those guys. It’s something that is a great thing for them to do for me.
“When I was drafted by the Giants, they were one of the top teams in the country and they had some really good players, guys like Milan Lucic, who made me feel right at home.”
Kane was always a terrific scorer throughout his minor hockey career at the North Shore Winter Club. Under Giants coach Don Hay, he learned to play without the puck, an absolute must in major junior and, of course, the pro level.
“At first, playing for Don was a little intimidating,” Kane recalled. “But he taught me so much about the game and kind of made me a complete player pretty early on. The biggest emphasis on a Don Hay team is just checking. From your top guys all the way down to your grinders, Don did a great job in making us believe that if you check well, you’re going to get those offensive opportunities.
“As I matured, I started to understand that a lot more.”
This season, Kane is starting to understand what it’s like to play in a Canadian city, where the spotlight and scrutiny are never turned off. In Atlanta, the fan base was small and there were other pro teams in town to absorb the attention. There is also the matter of the weather.
“Yeah, it goes from one extreme almost to the other,” said Kane. “Atlanta is such a nice place to live in and I do miss it. I really found a home there in the two years I was there. It’s hot. You’re sitting at your rooftop pool in January and it’s 80 degrees [ Fahrenheit]. It’s unfortunate it just didn’t work out but these kinds of things happen.”
Winnipeg, he noted, is “obviously” colder and a lot smaller of a town.
“Anywhere you go, everywhere you go, people know who you are,” he explained. “They want to talk to you and they have something to say, or whatnot. I think it’s a place where you need to be careful.”