Patrick Kane

Last Season

Sixteen goals and 41 assists in 67 games — 57 points, minus-one, at 17:42 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Detroit. His 1,369th career game and his 1,400th point.

The Finesse Game

The hands and the head have not gone anywhere and they are the only two things that ever mattered. Forty-one assists at 37 years old, most of them made from a standstill on the half-wall, waiting for a lane that nobody else on the ice can see yet.

The shot has drifted outward — 29 per cent of his unblocked attempts from inside twenty feet, median 30 — and sixteen goals is what that produces now.

He was never fast. He is now slow, and it has cost him less than it would cost anybody else, because his game was always played in the half-second before the check arrives rather than in the race to the puck.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten and 176 pounds at 37. Sixteen penalty minutes. There is no physical game, there never was one, and 1,369 games is the argument that it was not required.

The Intangibles

Five hundred and eight goals, 892 assists, three Stanley Cups, and a Conn Smythe. He returns to the club he won them with, which is either sentiment or a genuine attempt to give Bedard somebody who has done it.

The five-on-five numbers last season were respectable — 50.9 per cent of the expected goals, 61st percentile — on a considerably better team than this one, and they will not survive the move.

He is 37 and this is almost certainly the last stretch. Watch it while it is on.