We always wondered what Patrick Kane might do if the Chicago Blackhawks finally gave him some good players to work with. The answer is apparently somewhere between “play amazing hockey” and “rewrite pages from the franchise record book.”
Kane, who turned 27 on Thursday, has started this season at an absolutely scorching pace. No longer trying to shoulder the offensive load for an entire line on his own, the superstar winger has been freed to dangle, pass and snipe his way to point after point. Artem Anisimov and Artemi Panarin have helped to fully unleash Kane’s offensive skill on opponents. The result has been dominance.
There’s still a lot of time left in the regular season, but we’re nearly one-quarter of the way through and Kane continues to produce at a level we’ve never seen before. This is offensive production Chicago fans haven’t really been treated to since the high-scoring days of young Jeremy Roenick. And even if he takes a slight step back from here, which seems inevitable, the numbers still put Kane on pace for one of the best regular seasons in Blackhawks history.
Kane presently leads the NHL in goals (13), assists (17), points (30), plus-minus (+13), power play goals (six) and game-winning goals (four). His face is plastered all over NHL.com’s statistics website. Last season, he didn’t reach 30 points until the middle of December.
Maybe this is just a hot run in a long season, but with the Hawks’ star winger off to his best start ever in 2015-16, here’s a look at whether he’ll be able to keep it up and what that would mean for the record books.
Pace and projection
You’re always looking at a player’s shot rates and percentages when considering a hot streak. Scoring tends to trend pretty closely with shooting percentages and you can generally pick out the fluke scoring seasons from guys with unusually high figures in that category.
Kane, unsurprisingly, has a career high shooting percentage of 18.1 this season. Over the previous three seasons, that number was 14.3 percent. Going forward, expect him to probably shoot something closer to that the the level he’s set early on this season.
With that said, other aspects of Kane’s game have shown sustainable improvement next to Anisimov and Panarin. His shots-per-60-minutes rate has increased from 9.2 to a career-high 10.8. He’s also getting more primary assists than ever thanks to his supernatural connection with Panarin, whose flashy game seems to mesh perfectly with Kane’s “Showtime” stylings.
The result is that Kane’s numbers likely won’t take much of a step back, at least from luck’s side. The forward is currently on pace for 56 goals, 73 assists and a grand total of 129 points. Even if he only shoots 14 percent for the rest of the season with the same shot rate, he’ll still finish with a career-high 46 goals and and likely crack the 100-point barrier for the first time in his career.
Another thing that could hurt his numbers would be separating from Panarin for an extended period of time, though that seems unlikely with the way the team is depending on that line for production right now.
And if that shooting percentage somehow stays up there all season? His numbers will be among the best in Hawks history.
Franchise records
Kane has an outside shot at breaking numerous single-season records for the Blackhawks in 2015-16. He would need to step up his game even further, which should tell you something about how crazy some of the numbers are, but he’s still in the mix after nearly a quarter of the season. That alone is impressive considering the way players used to score in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Here’s how the franchise’s single-season record numbers stack up with Kane’s current paces:
So, a couple things to note.
First, Kane probably won’t keep up his current pace so surpassing it to catch Denis Savard and Bobby Hull’s records would be an astonishing feat in today’s game. As you’ll see below, getting to 100 points, let alone the 132 needed to set the franchise record, would be impressive given the modern scoring rates. If Kane ultimately misses out on the record books, that doesn’t mean he’s not playing special hockey.
If you adjusted his projected statistics based on schedule and era, Kane would likely blow the records all away. Hockey-Reference offers “adjusted statistics” that try to accommodate for the change in time period and they say Kane’s adjusted totals would be 64 goals, 82 assists and 146 points. Obviously that’s only to be taken with a grain of salt but it gives you an idea of the rare territory Kane is in on the ice.
And even if Kane doesn’t break records, being in the mix with guys who put their numbers up when games were often decided 6-5 is an incredible feat. In 1987-88, Savard’s record year, he recorded a point on 46.1 percent of the Hawks’ 284 goals. This season, Kane has recorded a point on 30 of the Hawks’ 53 goals, or a stunning 56.6 percent of all scores. So, yeah, single-season records aside, we’ve never really seen a Blackhawks player take over the offense like this.
Recent great seasons
Kane’s production is also significant because it would represent one of the best individual seasons since the lockout in 2004. Since then, only 16 players have topped 100 players in a single year. Only three of those ever got past 120: Joe Thornton (125) and Jaromir Jagr (123) in 2005-06, then Sidney Crosby (120) in 2006-07. Last season, Jamie Benn led the league with just 87 points.
There’s been a bit of a turnaround on that front this season with Kane, Benn and Tyler Seguin leading the charge. All three players are on pace to crack 100 points and have enough breathing room they can slow down a little bit and still make it. No player has even cracked 110 points in a season since Henrik Sedin notched 112 with the Canucks in 2009-10.
For Kane, even with all of his accolades and one of the biggest salaries in the sport, this is new. The forward generally wasn’t among the league leaders in scoring figures before this season. In 2009-10, he finished eighth in the league in assists. In the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, he finished fifth in goals. But otherwise Kane’s career has been more about big moments than big numbers. This season, he’s looking to put that all together into his greatest performance yet.
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Kane’s breakout is proving to be an example of the power of putting an in-his-prime superstar in the right position to succeed. The Blackhawks finally have figured out the right mix with Panarin and Anisimov flanking Kane on the second line. It’s quickly become one of the most productive in the league, with Kane leading the show as the game’s most prolific scorer. I mean, seriously, recording a point on 56 percent of a team’s goals is ridiculous. Seguin, with 27 points, has only recorded a point on 39 percent of the Stars’ goals this season. Nobody leans on a single player for scoring more than the Chicago has on Kane.
This is what everyone had hoped would happen if the Hawks finally committed to getting the right pieces around Kane and stuck with it. This is why you pay $10.5 million for a player to score. Whether it’s enough to get his name written all over the record books may be not certain, but it’s clear Kane is in for a monster season.