After a tumultuous offseason, Chicago Blackhawks superstar Patrick Kane extended his point streak to 23 games with his 600th point earlier this week.
“[I had] a couple chances to get something earlier in the game,” explained Kane after the game. “To be honest with you, I wasn’t thinking about it too much until you go out there in the end there and you hear the crowd cheering and you know they’re looking for something. That’s when you want to get something at the end.”
Chicago defeated the Nashville Predators 4-1 at home on Tuesday.
The Winnipeg Jets almost snapped his streak on Sunday, but Kane assisted on an empty net goal to make it 22 straight games to break Bobby Hull’s Blackhawks 21 game point streak. The Golden Jet witnessed the game in person at the United Center.
“I just hope he breaks the record and then goes on and chases Gretzky,” exclaimed Hull. “It’s only 30 (more games). It’s not a big deal. He can get 30 more, I’m sure.”
It is no surprise Wayne Gretzky holds the record with a 51 game point streak during the 1983-84 season.
This action occurs only a few months after hockey fans and hockey media demanded the NHL and Blackhawks suspend Kane because a woman accused him of rape. They demanded Kane lose his job and salary over allegations without any concrete proof of a crime. In early November, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III announced “that no physical or forensic evidence backs up the woman’s allegations” along with “inconsistencies between her accounts and those of eyewitnesses.”
But that did not stop some hockey writers believe he does not deserve the MVP because of the accusations. The New York Post‘s Larry Brooks lashes out at the critics and reminds them it is about the game, not off the ice situations:
Now, even as the investigation was closed early last month as announced in a press release that contained a statement from Erie County DA Frank Sedita III’s referring to “this so-called ‘case,’ ” certain quarters of the NHL awards electorate are back in the hand-wringing business.
Stop. Stop already.
I have no idea whether or not I would want Patrick Kane to date my sister. I don’t know him except from afar and through a locker-room interview scrum or two. But that hypothetical would not inform my choice for the Hart Trophy if I were to have a ballot, nor should it become an issue when votes are cast immediately after the regular season.
There is no morals clause attached to the Hart, which goes to, “The player adjudged to be the most valuable to his team.”
At this point, with Kane on a franchise-record tying 21-game point streak he aims to break Sunday night, the Blackhawks’ winger is the MVP front-runner, with Dallas’ Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin and the Rangers’ Henrik Lundqvist, the Islanders’ John Tavares and Washington’s Alex Ovechkin also in the conversation.
This is a case about hockey. There is nothing more to see here beyond Kane’s brilliance on the ice, just as the Erie County’s DA office decided there was nothing more to see in the “so-called ‘case’ ” there, either.
Kane looks to extend his streak tonight in Nashville as the Blackhawks take on the Predators.