NHL Network: David Pagnotta on free agent forward Patrick Kane and his future.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Jamie Hersch: “And another big notable UFA that is still on the market is Patrick Kane. We’ve been saying that he’s still got plenty of game left in him. That’s not the question. It’s kind of, where does he want to play? Who wants to pay him?
When do you think we might see him sign with a new team?”
Pagnotta: “I think this is another player going similar to Jonathan Toews (this was before it was known that Toews was taking the year off). Pat Kane has to figure out his health. Make sure he’s fully ready to go before he makes a decision.
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He’s made it known he certainly wants to play and he wants to play for a few more years moving forward. But he wants to make sure, he’s got a strong timeline in place, suitable timeline in place so he can be honest with teams with respect to his health.
And it sounds like that’s likely to come, at least having a good indication as to what that timeline is going to look like, in the next four to five weeks closer to camp. By the time training camps get underway Pat Kane should have an idea how long it’s going to take him to get fully ready and back to speed to join an NHL club.
So, we’re probably not going to hear anything of major significance I should say with respect to Patrick Kane’s future until we get closer to camp and then start to figure out what those options are. And the teams that had interest in him prior, and I’ll put a Boston sort of in that mix a little bit, but more so Colorado, the Dallas Stars that had a lot of interest in him, the New York Islanders and a few others.
They’re gonna look to see what that timeline looks like once we get closer to camp. Can they make that cap situation work? Gonna give teams a little bit of flexibility but a little bit of work. But they’re gonna have to figure out once we get camps underway in the middle of September.
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