Patrick Kane’s first public comments since the NHL season halted more than a month ago were hardly gloomy.
On a Zoom video conference call Monday with the Islanders’ Mathew Barzal — a close friend and fellow participant at Darryl Belfry’s summer camp — and the Jets’ Mark Scheifele, the three NHL stars spent 45 minutes laughing and poking fun at each other through entertaining pick ‘em and trivia games.
Who would Kane want with him in a 3-on-3 game, excluding Hawks teammates? Auston Matthews and Drew Doughty.
Who would he not want to face on a breakaway? Carey Price or Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Who would he want with him on a 2-on-1? Artemi Panarin.
“That was probably the funnest hockey I’ve ever played,” Kane added to his Panarin answer, providing a quote that instantly went viral on Twitter.
Sure, Kane may be stuck inside his Chicago condominium, along with the vast majority of the Blackhawks’ fan base.
And sure, he’s been watching NBC Sports Chicago’s replays of the Hawks’ 2010 Stanley Cup run and playing Xbox video games for the first time in years, but those time-fillers don’t compare to the excitement of live hockey. (His building’s pilates studio — his temporary training center — isn’t exactly the same as Fifth-Third Arena, either.)
But just like the rest of society, he’s finding a way to make the most of the down time. As a result, Monday’s call was as entertaining as a period of preseason, if not regular season, hockey.
It turns out the same can be said for much of the rest of the NHL.
In fact, the league-run Zoom calls that have sprung up by the dozens in recent weeks — Jonathan Toews’ March 31 appearance turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg — have provided more insight into star players’ daily lives, outside-of-hockey hobbies and vibrant personalities than a normal, full season does.
The calls have rarely been newsworthy. Doughty dropped a relative bombshell on another call Monday that he doesn’t “see how this season is going to return,” but Kane, Barzal and Scheifele completely stayed away from current events.
But the calls have been lively, playful and thoroughly engrossing, representing a drastic disparity with typical locker room interviews. At the least, no well-trod cliches about having a fast start or working hard to get two points have been unironically dropped.
The best part of Toews’ call came when he and Alex Pietrangelo meandered into discussing old-school NHL hit montages on YouTube. Kane’s call had even more laugh-out-loud moments, like when Barzal forgot which college now-Isles general manager Lou Lamoriello led to the 1983 Frozen Four (“Those contract negotiations just got a little bit tougher,” Kane quipped).
Once the coronavirus pandemic ends and hockey returns to its normal schedule, the Zoom calls will inevitably fade away from the league’s media procedures, with good reason.
But the NHL — which has long fostered an atmosphere that discourages players from speaking out about personal thoughts and passions — would be wise to learn from their popularity.
The NBA’s culture of individualism has translated perfectly to the 21st-century sports world, especially its social media component. The NHL’s culture of always-team-first homogeneity has not, for better or worse.
Yet clearly, the biggest superstars of hockey can juggle simultaneously showing their human side and professionally representing their team. Kane didn’t compromise any of his talent, mystique or respect by joking around publicly on Monday, but he did make himself seem like more of a real person.
If one silver lining of the 2020 season shutdown proves to be a greater emphasis in future seasons on candid, lighthearted discussion between the game’s biggest names, the NHL may emerge from the pandemic in a better state than it entered it.
