It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Patrick Kane.
He expected to wear only one uniform in his NHL career, having been drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2007 and becoming a Stanley Cup-winning franchise icon over the next 16 seasons. But a rebuild, and a desire to break from the past, meant “Showtime” ended in Chi-Town last season with a trade deadline move to the New York Rangers.
“Him and Johnny [Toews] wanted to retire as Hawks. But unfortunately, things worked out differently,” Kane’s agent, Pat Brisson, told ESPN last week.
Kane, 34, entered uncharted territory this summer. He’s no longer a Blackhawk and is officially an unrestricted free agent for the first time in his career after his eight-year, $84 million deal ended.
In another offseason, Kane’s availability would have produced weeks of intense speculation before a massive contract announcement on July 1. He’s fourth among active players in points (1,237) and sixth in goals (451). Even past his peak, he’s an explosive offensive talent on the wing.
But Patrick Kane remains a free agent midway through July. The NHL’s flat salary cap for 2023-24 is one factor. Kane’s decision to undergo major hip surgery a month before free agency opened, which will keep him out of action for four to six months, is the primary factor.
It’s one of the most unorthodox approaches for a superstar free agent in recent memory. Kane isn’t looking to commit to a team in the summer. He’ll take his time to recover — with early returns promising — while keeping an eye on the standings during the opening weeks of the season. When he’s ready to return, and Brisson says he believes he’ll be ready to roll by December, Kane will select the suitor he feels is the best fit and with the best chance of winning the Stanley Cup.
But this approach has its drawbacks. Kane can’t control how general managers will manage their rosters. A desirable team might not have the same cap flexibility in-season that they could have now for Kane.
“There are certainly teams who would take him on board now, start paying him and then provide the rehab services so that he can have that. Or he can wait and see,” one NHL general manager said. “The problem with waiting and seeing is the cap.”
Brisson said teams have called with interest in Kane. Those that want to be contenders have the cap space to offer him something substantial right now. But some that are legitimate Stanley Cup contenders have precious little space.
The agent said he’s not concerned with playing the waiting game.
“There’s no rush. This is one I’m very comfortable with. I’m very calm,” Brisson said. “You could offer me a one-year deal or a two-year deal right now at $7 million or so. I don’t even know if I want to entertain it, because it’s not what he needs. We’ll see, at the right time, how he feels, where he’s at, and then we’ll take it from there.”
Besides, making a choice now would mean taking a chance on a team that might or might not manifest as a contender. “Signing in the summer, you’d trade off the value of knowing what is going to happen in the future,” one general manager said.
What’s going to happen with Kane in the future is another issue: Can Patrick Kane be “Showtime” again after hip-surfacing surgery in his mid-30s?
“I know I’m turning 35 next [season], but it’s not like I feel old. I still feel pretty young,” Kane said this offseason. “I feel like the passion is still there. I still know that I can be a top player if my focus is solely on hockey instead of how I feel.”
KANE IS TWO SEASONS removed from 92 points in 78 games on a team that finished seventh in the Central Division.
On the ice, it was Chicago’s worst season since 2005-06. Off the ice, it was perhaps the lowest point of the franchise’s existence. An independent report released in Oct. 2021 detailed how the team reacted to sexual assault allegations made by former player Kyle Beach against Brad Aldrich, who was the team’s video coach during their 2010 Stanley Cup victory, the first of Kane’s career.
General manager Stan Bowman resigned. Kyle Davidson took over the job on an interim basis, before being hired as the general manager in March 2022.
Toews and Kane were both entering the final year of their contract in the 2022-23 season. Davidson was clear about the direction of the team: Breaking free of their dynastic years by going into a rebuild.
Kane, meanwhile, wasn’t playing at a 92-point pace anymore. He was clearly laboring with an injured hip, but still managed 45 points in 54 games — including 16 goals.
Kane was advised by many before the trade deadline to get the surgery that he needed to mend that hip. But he had been playing through the injury for about a year and a half, and decided to continue to push through it in order to join the Rangers — a presumed Stanley Cup contender and his preferred trade destination.
He made his Madison Square Garden debut on March 2. The buzz was palpable. Adult-sized Kane jerseys sold out inside the arena nearly an hour before puck drop. Fans gasped whenever those flashes of vintage Kane happened on the ice, like when he was stickhandling through Ottawa Senators defenders.
But it wasn’t a vintage Kane performance: In his first game since Feb. 22, Kane didn’t register a point and was on the ice for three Senators goals. The Rangers’ power play, where Kane was expected to excel, when 0-for-4, including a five-minute major in the first period.
“It’s a special place to play. It’s an Original Six franchise,” Kane said after the game. “Playing in MSG and you get a reception like that? It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Kane managed five goals and seven assists in 19 games for the Rangers, with another goal and five assists in the playoffs. His explosive skating wasn’t there. The “Showtime” was missing. New York lost to the rival New Jersey Devils in seven games.
“Personally, I look at that series and I know if I felt a little bit better, I can help us win that series,” Kane said. “So it’s a little disappointing and depressing in a way.”
Kane credited the Rangers’ training staff with getting him in the best shape his hip would allow.
“They did a really good job of getting me to feel as good as I possibly could. So when the game starts, you think about hockey, you think about playing,” he said. “But before that, it’s just a lot of maintenance and thinking about how you’re going to get yourself to feel the best as possible to play.”
He knew something had to be done about his hip in the offseason. Kane and his team dove deep into potential surgeries. They opted for a hip surfacing.
Hip resurfacing is an alternative to hip replacement. According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, “the femoral head is not removed, but is instead trimmed and capped with a smooth metal covering” in hip resurfacing.
On June 1, Kane had the surgery under Dr. Edwin Su, a New York-based surgeon. The prognosis was four to six months of recovery. He would be a month removed from major surgery when NHL free agency opened, with months of rehab left.
While there’s data about the aftereffects of hip resurfacing on other athletes, there isn’t much about how it impacts hockey players.
Dr. Benjamin Domb, founder and medical director of the American Hip Institute in Illinois, said hip resurfacing is an uncommon procedure in general, and even less common in athletes. But he cited tennis star Andy Murray as a success story and that Rafael Nadal hopes to do the same.
“The first key to successful rehabilitation is how the surgery is done. At American Hip Institute, we have developed a technique for minimally invasive hip resurfacing with computer guidance,” Domb said. “This technique allows for a faster recovery, ensures extremely accurate implant placement, and is designed to get professional athletes back to highly competitive sports.”
The second key, he said, is the rehabilitation period.
“It is critical that their therapy be supervised by expert physical therapists,” Domb said. “Too early a return to play can doom the recovery, so careful assessment of their progress and timing of progression is key.”
Brisson is hopeful that the timing for Kane’s return is on target and perhaps even ahead of schedule.
“He’s already ahead in his recovery right now. I do believe he’ll be ‘the Patrick Kane,'” Brisson said. “I’m always cautiously optimistic, but I’m extremely confident as well.”
BRISSON SAID HE HAS NEVER experienced a situation like this with a free agent of Kane’s magnitude. The closest proxy was Mats Sundin in 2008, who was represented by J.P. Barry and Brisson — but Sundin wasn’t coming off major offseason surgery.
The Hall of Fame center was 37 years old. He had a stellar season with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2007-08: 78 points in 74 games, including 32 goals. He famously wielded his no-movement clause to remain with the Leafs, despite having decided not to take part in their rebuild. He became a free agent and sought to sign with a Cup contender.
The Vancouver Canucks offered him a two-year contract on July 1 that would have made him the league’s highest-paid player. But Sundin, a free agent for the first time in his career, was content to wait all the way to December, when he signed a one-year, bonus-laden contract with Vancouver on Dec. 18.
At the time of his signing, the Canucks were tied for first place in their division. They’d end up losing in the conference semifinals — to Patrick Kane and the Blackhawks.
Besides the surgery, there’s another significant difference between Sundin in 2008 and Kane in 2023. The Canucks didn’t pay any of Sundin’s salary through performance bonuses. That’s likely not going to be the case with whoever signs Patrick Kane next season.
Kane turns 35 on Nov. 19, meaning his next contract can have performance bonuses to bring down his cap number. Performance bonuses count against the salary cap, but a team can exceed the salary cap for performance bonuses by a maximum cushion of 7.5% of the upper limit.
These contracts have been utilized for other star veterans on contending teams. The Boston Bruins signed Patrice Bergeron last summer to a 35-plus contract worth $5 million. Since $2.5 million was in performance bonuses, the cap number was just $2.5 million in the regular season. All Bergeron had to do was play 10 games to earn his full salary.
It’s a significant advantage for Kane and his ability to fit it under a contender’s salary cap.
“If he becomes available at the time and you can try to make room, you do it,” one NHL general manager said.
Brisson said the expectation is that Kane would sign for the rest of the season with a contender, rather than ink a multiyear deal when he’s healthy. Then it’ll be back to the unrestricted free agent pool in summer 2024: a year older, a lot healthier and with a salary cap that’s going to significantly rise for the first time in years.
But for now, the focus is on getting Kane back on the ice and then getting him another chance at raising the Stanley Cup next season.
“Let’s make sure he is 100 percent and that he feels great. Then we can decide where he’s going to go,” Brisson said. “There’s going to be plenty of teams doing good, plenty of teams doing bad. There are going to be teams using [long-term injured reserve].
“We’ll pick where we want to go. I don’t think too many teams will turn him down.”
BOSTON — The Red Sox activated All-Star third baseman Alex Bregman from the 10-day injured list before Friday’s game against Tampa Bay.
Bregman, who has been sidelined since May 24 with a right quad strain, returned to his customary spot in the field and was slotted in the No. 2 spot of Boston’s lineup for the second of a four-game series against the Rays. He sustained the injury when he rounded first base and felt his quad tighten up.
A two-time World Series winner who spent the first nine seasons of his big league career with the Houston Astros, Bregman signed a $120 million, three-year contract in February. At the time of the injury, he was hitting .299 with 11 homers and 35 RBI. Those numbers led to him being named to the American League’s All-Star team for the third time since breaking into the majors with the Astros in 2016.
Bregman missed 43 games with the quad strain. Earlier this week, he told reporters that he was trending in a direction where he didn’t believe he would require a minor league rehab assignment. With three games left before the All-Star break, the Red Sox agreed the time was right to reinstate a player to a team that entered Friday in possession of one of the AL’s three wild-card berths.
“He’s going to do his part,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said before Friday’s game. “Obviously, the timing, we’ll see where he’s at, but he’s been working hard on the swing … visualizing and watching video.”
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.