It’s still early in the NHL season. Players and teams are still getting their bearings and setting the foundation for a long season to come.
But for the players hoping to play in hockey’s first true best-on-best tournament since the World Cup of Hockey in 2016, there’s a key deadline approaching quickly and quietly. Rosters for the 4 Nations Face-Off next February are due by December 2.
And for Team USA, leading up to a highly anticipated event with perhaps the most talented player pool they’ve ever had, one of general manager Bill Guerin’s most interesting decisions will be in Detroit, surrounding perhaps the greatest American player ever: Patrick Kane.
For the last generation, Kane has been one of the faces of the NHL. He’s won three Stanley Cups, was league MVP in 2016, and is already within 100 points of being the all-time leading scorer among American NHLers (currently either Brett Hull with 1,391 or Mike Modano with 1,374, depending on if you count birthplace or nationality).
And because of the long hiatus between major international events, he’s also one of the few players who actually has true best-on-best experience on the biggest stage, with two Olympic selections and a silver medal to his name.
This 4 Nations roster, though, is shaping up to be potentially the most skilled team the Americans have ever had. There will be legitimate NHL stars cut from Team USA. And at age 35, even for all Kane has accomplished in his career, that means he’s going to have some stiff competition to make the cut.
No, he doesn’t move quite the same way that he did in his prime. And his defending won’t make him a penalty killer for the Americans. But even with that said, there’s still a strong case for Kane to earn a place on Team USA as Dec. 2 approaches.
“It’s a pretty easy choice, honestly, for me,” said Alex DeBrincat, Kane’s longtime teammate with the Blackhawks and now Red Wings, and a fellow American. “I think there’s a lot of good players in this league, but for him, I think his skill is above a lot of guys.”
At this stage of his career, Kane’s impact is most consistently felt on the power play, where he is able to easily hold onto the puck and use his legendary vision to pick apart defenses and find linemates in good spots.
And while on this iteration of Team USA virtually everyone will be capable of playing on (and in many cases, running) a power play, few do it quite like Kane.
That’s already been on display multiple times in this young season, first in Nashville — where Kane waited for a seam-pass lane to find DeBrincat wide open on the doorstep — and then last week against the Devils, when Kane appeared to manipulate a defender’s stick and feet positioning to give him a clear pass to Dylan Larkin at the net. Both resulted in Red Wings goals.
Certainly, the power play is the most natural vessel for those kinds of plays because of the time and space afforded to puck carriers. But that vision still plays at all strengths — especially when surrounded by an All-Star roster. Kane has at times played with DeBrincat and Larkin in Detroit, but more often — especially this season — he’s been next to J.T. Compher with a rotating cast of opposite wingers. He’s still already put up seven points in his first nine games — and that’s with the Red Wings struggling to sustain possessions early in the season.
“You put him with the top-end players,” DeBrincat said, “and he’s going to just be that much better.”
Indeed, imagining Kane next to Auston Matthews or Jack Eichel at center, and with Brady or Matthew Tkachuk on the opposite wing to help with down-low retrievals, and it’s easy to get excited about what Kane could help create with the puck on his stick.
“It’s like being a quarterback,” Red Wings goalie Alex Lyon said. “The more things you see, the more you do, the more times you experience it, you build that rolodex in your brain. And he’s got as deep a rolodex as anybody.”
That experience, too, is something this American group will be lacking — mainly due to the eight-year drought since the last true best-on-best hockey.
There are players expected to be on this American team who played at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. But Kane is the only one who actually played at the event for Team USA. Most of the others played for Team North America — a team composed of the best 23-and-under players from the U.S. and Canada. Among the candidates for this year’s Team USA who played on Team North America are Matthews, Eichel, Larkin, J.T. Miller, Seth Jones and Vincent Trocheck.
That experience all counts, for sure, but it still doesn’t come close to what Kane has seen — between that event, two Olympics, and all those high-pressure Stanley Cup playoff games over the years. When the moment gets big, Kane gets bigger.
“Three Stanley Cups and an MVP will make you feel pretty at ease in most situations,” Lyon said. “But I just don’t think that he gets worked up in those moments. I think he expects the best out of himself in those moments, and it just is a credit to his preparation and his attitude towards the game.”
Look no further than the aforementioned New Jersey game from last week for examples. It wasn’t a game with medal (or even playoff) stakes, but that assist Kane made to Larkin came in the third period of a tie game, on a play where Kane had rotated up to the point to run the power play from up top. And when the Devils came back to tie it up, it was Kane again rising to the moment for the game-winner.
SHOWTIME. 🎬 Kane gives Detroit the late lead! #LGRW pic.twitter.com/HtcbM1BWZD
— Ryan Hana (@RyanHanaWWP) October 25, 2024
Then there’s the harder-to-quantify factor that comes with experience, which comes as much on the bench or in the dressing room as it does on the ice. Most of the players that will be on Team USA will no doubt have grown up idolizing Kane. Many will have patterned parts of their game after him. When he talks, his voice will hold considerable weight.
When I spoke to Kane about the 4 Nations tournament on Tuesday, he said he hadn’t spent much time thinking about the tournament yet with the start of the NHL season still so fresh. That makes sense, with the Red Wings trying to break an eight-year playoff drought after coming up a tiebreaker short last season. But make no mistake, it matters to Kane to be on that team.
“Every time you put on that USA sweater it means something — even more so now that you don’t get to do it as often,” he said. “And there’s some big tournaments coming up. So, it would mean a lot.”
And when I asked if he thought the tournament — which will only feature four teams — would have the same juice as larger events like the Olympics, it was clear he was prepared to treat it like a truly high-stakes event.
“We haven’t won a big tournament in a long time, whether it’s been World Championships, Olympics, World Cup,” Kane said. “I think the last one we won was ’96. We’ve had a lot of success in those junior tournaments and things like that, but as far as at the top level we haven’t had much. … I think for the Americans, you’ve got to take it seriously. You’ve got to be as excited as possible about it, because it’s another opportunity to possibly win a best-on-best tournament.”
It’s easy to envision Kane delivering that same message to the locker room on the first day the team meets, to set the tone. In fact, there might be no better messenger.
“He’s the greatest American-born player of all time,” Lyon said. “We all grow up wanting to do that, and wanting to be that, and he is that.”
That’s why even at 35, and even with an incredibly deep pool of players to choose from, Kane still looks like a natural choice for Team USA when rosters are submitted.
“I think he’s still got it,” DeBrincat said. “He’s done it for so long that I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to do it again.”
(Top photo of Patrick Kane playing in the World Cup of Hockey tournament in 2016: Tom Szczerbowski / Getty Images)
