Front-runner out of the Kane sweepstakes: battle down to 2 teams!

Three teams have been believed to be front-runners to sign free agent Evander Kane and now Kevin Weekes of the NHL Network is reporting that we are down to two clubs, with an imminent signing to come shortly.

Per Weekes, it has come down to two final clubs in the race to sign Kane with an announcement possible this afternoon.

On Tuesday night, ESPN’s Emily Kaplan reported, after speaking with Kane’s agent Dan Milstein, that his client had been interviewed by the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday and was expected to meet with other interested teams. Milstein wouldn’t say which clubs they are.However, Kaplan believed both teams in Florida, the Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning are interested in signing Kane.

This morning, insider Joe Smith indicated that the Lightning had pulled out of the sweepstakes, which could mean that the two teams still after Kane are the Oilers and Panthers.

This seems to be the appropriate ending to this ongoing saga: one last showdown. It all started over the weekend when Kane was placed on unconditional waivers and then bought out by the San Jose Sharks after he reportedly left the team’s AHL affiliate Barracuda to fly home to Vancouver for the holidays despite testing positive for COVID-19. Kane was allegedly still in the quarantine phase of his illness but flew home against league protocol anyways and then flew back to San Jose a week later than he was scheduled for. In effect he dipped on his team to spend Christmas at home even while being COVID-19 positive and then stayed at home an extra week… just because? Once Kane arrived back in San Jose he was informed that he had breached his contract and it would be terminated, resulting in him becoming a free agent. This, of course, is on top of all the other drama that Kane has gotten himself into in the past calendar year. Without rehashing everything in order he has filed for bankruptcy, gone through a messy divorce and was suspended for 21 games for providing a fake vaccination card. You know the story by now.

Kane will get another chance, and we are closer than ever to finding out where.