The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau suggests that Patrick Kane won’t win a Stanley Cup with the Red Wings, and as such, the last “shot at glory” he could earn is a gold medal win if and/or when he makes the U.S. Olympic hockey team:
At 36, Kane can still be a solid contributor, posting 21 goals and 59 points last season. But Kane signed only a one-year, $3-million contract for this coming year on a middling Red Wings team that will compete hard just to try to make the playoffs. If Kane sticks with the Wings for the rest of his career, it’s unlikely he’ll have a chance of winning the Stanley Cup for the fourth time.
So Kane’s last chance at hockey glory could come on the international stage, if he makes the U.S. team at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Kane doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. His career totals of 492 goals and 1,343 points in 1,302 regular-season games, on top of his three Cup wins with the Chicago Blackhawks, make him a lock to be a Hockey Hall of Famer when he hangs up his skates.
But given that the Red Wings will be picked by many to miss the playoffs this coming season, you can see how Kane needs to make the most of his status as a U.S. icon and help lead Team America to a gold medal win at the 2026 Games in Milan, Italy.
That said, Kane isn’t guaranteed to make the American roster. Indeed, in this writer’s projected U.S. roster for the Olympics, Kane was not on the team.
“The one thing that’s kind of missing is a gold in best-on-best, right?” Kane told NHL.com last week at the Americans’ Olympic orientation camp. “It would be fun to have that opportunity.”
U.S. GM Bill Guerin has a very deep talent pool from which to draft a roster, and he may choose to go with a youth movement and select young wingers like Utah’s Clayton Keller, Minnesota’s Matt Boldy, Buffalo’s Tage Thompson and Montreal’s Cole Caufield at right wing. So Kane will have all the motivation in the world to come out of the starting gate strongly this season and nudge one of those aforementioned young players out of a roster spot for the Olympics.
If Kane does make the U.S. roster, who’s to say he won’t have one more place in the sun and one final chapter he can hang his hat on as an all-time great?
Continued; I’m gonna be mean here and suggest that Kane won’t be included on the 2026 U.S. Olympic team because Guerin does indeed show a preference for younger players and/or regular participants in the World Championship.
Guerin himself said this to ESPN’s Emily Kaplan recently:
“We’re doing things differently now, and the world championships are absolutely connected to this. If you’re saying no and you don’t have a legit excuse, it will hurt you,” Guerin said. “I am not afraid to say that we don’t look at that with the Olympics coming up. That’s the biggest stage. The world championships are huge. They might not be as popular in the United States, but in Europe, in Canada, it is, and it has to be important for us. … We need to know what you’re all about. We need to know that you want to help USA Hockey win.”
All things being equal…They aren’t equal. Guerin has preferred younger players over veteran stars previously, and Kane hasn’t taken part in a World Championship for some time, which hurts his odds of making the team as well.
Kane is going to have to play some spectacular point-per-game hockey between now and January to be included on the team. It’s gonna be an uphill climb because he’s older and hasn’t participated in many USA Hockey events, and that’s unfortunate, because I do agree with Proteau that when you’ve got a legendary player in the lineup, veteran savvy and big-time big-game performances are part of their arsenal.
