By the time the Sharks held their standard individual exit meetings with Doug Wilson and Bob Boughner before the beginning of the 2021 offseason, the general manager and the head coach already knew. Evander Kane was a problem for much of the season, and many on the team hoped it would be rectified in the coming months.
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Several key players informed team brass that if Kane was going to be a part of the Sharks going forward, they didn’t want to be. That’s how bad it got, and how complicated this situation has become.
“Guys were going into Doug’s office all year long,” according to one source, “saying Kane had to go. … All Doug would say is, ‘All teams have locker-room issues,’ which just isn’t true. Not the teams that win, anyway.”
“The Sharks ignored everything,” said an NHL agent who represents at least one player on the team. “Team turned a blind eye.”
The NHL is investigating Kane, who has been accused by his wife of gambling on NHL games. But the Sharks’ displeasure with Kane stemmed from a general disrespect for team rules, including routinely being late for games and practices, not adhering to the dress code and having poor practice habits. At one point late in the season, according to a source, Kane nearly came to blows with assistant coach Rocky Thompson in a meeting after arguing where he was supposed to be positioned on the power play. Several sources indicated there was a general frustration among the team that Kane was permitted to get away with whatever he wanted, with no repercussions. On previous Sharks teams, Kane had to answer to older, respected veterans like Joe Pavelski, Joel Ward, Paul Martin and Joe Thornton, the latter of whom memorably picked up Kane at the airport after a midseason trade from Buffalo on Feb. 26, 2018. All of them have since departed, including Thornton, of course, who signed as a free agent in the 2020 offseason with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“He’s now not having to really answer to anyone,” said one league source. “Nobody in that room is a fan of him. … (Boughner) likes him because he’s a good player, because he genuinely is, but the off-ice stuff is just too much at this point.”
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According to The Hockey News, one agent said: “One of my clients on the Sharks just hates him, hates the negative energy he brings into the room. Only (Kane) can change that, but he may have gone too far (with the current allegations). Some guys think that they’re bigger than the team, and I guess that helps drive (Kane) on a personal basis, but in the team construct, it doesn’t play well at all.”
Another league source suggested that Kane’s only real companion in the dressing room is Timo Meier, and that the situation with Kane “is also a Timo problem.” Meier, who once said early in his career he tried to model his power-forward game after Kane, was arguably the Sharks’ most disappointing player last season with 12 goals and 31 points in 54 games. Whether Meier can reverse his decline of the past two seasons after scoring 30 goals in 2018-19 will be vital to the Sharks’ success in 2021-22.
In fairness to Boughner, the coach was in a difficult position. The undermanned Sharks did manage to hang in the West Division race until the second week of April before an eight-game losing streak sealed their fate as a playoff-less team for the second consecutive season. A big part of the reason they remained competitive was Kane, who never went more than three games without a point and ended the season with a team-high 22 goals and 49 points while playing in all 56 games. He was named as Sharks team MVP, as voted on by the local media and broadcasters.
Still, after the season, Boughner seemed to express regret at not being hard enough on certain players who presumably didn’t abide by the “Sharks Code.”
“You want to hold everybody to the same standard, which we do, but that has to go for your best players as well. There can’t be any blurred lines there,” Boughner said on May 13. “Because the situation we were in and we’re fighting where every point is crucial, some guys might have gotten away with more than we’d wish for. But we were at the mercy of trying to win important games at that time of year.
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“It’s not a problem at all. But that’s something, if you look in the mirror, and you say next year coming in, (on) day one (we’ve) got to make sure everybody’s on the same page, they stay on the same page, and no one veers from that path. … I’m a player’s coach, but at the end of the day we’ve got to make sure that the job is being done.”
As for Wilson, he also had an incentive to keep Kane in the lineup. The Sharks were never going to challenge for a Stanley Cup last season, even if they had somehow snuck into the playoffs. A player like Kane might have value on the summer trade market based on his numbers, even if Wilson curiously gave him a limited three-team no trade clause to go along with a seven-year, $49 million contract in the 2018 offseason. (Kane almost certainly would not have gotten that kind of deal elsewhere, considering that when the Sharks acquired him, then-Sabres GM Jason Botterill said he had a lack of options when it came to dealing the winger. “The bottom line is we had one legitimate offer for Evander,” Botterill said at the time.)
Wilson did explore trading Kane earlier this summer, to no avail. A player who is a known disruption in the dressing room — as Kane reportedly has been at times throughout his career, particularly during a stint in Winnipeg — is virtually untradeable, especially with four more seasons at $7 million annually.
Now, the NHL’s investigation into Kane’s wife’s accusation that the winger bet on and threw NHL games — along with saying that he’s not supporting her or the couple’s daughter, while she’s pregnant with a second child — have surely made Kane a problem that the Sharks and Sharks alone will have to rectify. Options are limited, as the second buyout window is now closed for the club. On Tuesday, Kane posted an image on his Twitter account of him wearing Sharks gear before presumably going on the ice.
— Evander Kane (@evanderkane_9) August 10, 2021
What the Sharks do next is unclear, although one way that they could separate themselves from him is out of their hands. If it’s proven that Kane bet on Sharks games, or any NHL games, he’ll almost certainly never play again and his contract could be voided. At this point, it would be irresponsible to speculate on what the investigation will yield.
Still, it’s entirely possible the Sharks won’t take the kind of steps they hope to take as an organization while Kane remains on the ice and in the dressing room. Wilson, Boughner and team leaders have been clear that the culture has been an issue in recent seasons, and that’s something they’ve actively tried to address. Adding respected veteran players like Nick Bonino, Andrew Cogliano and James Reimer in free agency speaks to that.
Further, the Sharks did seem to take some strides last season in terms of culture, even with Kane’s unpopularity. A guy like Mario Ferraro, in particular, is one player that an organization can build its culture around in the coming years as the Sharks focus on developing a restocked system featuring players like 2020 draft picks Thomas Bordeleau and Ozzy Wiesblatt, and 2021 No. 7 overall selection William Eklund.
A clean break from Kane, regardless of how the Sharks do it, could be the best path forward even if the winger’s on-ice production proves impossible to replace in the short term.
(Photo: Brandon Magnus / NHLI via Getty Images)
