Chicago Blackhawks: Patrick Kane takes home an incredible honor

Patrick Kane has been an incredible player throughout his National Hockey League career. He is going to go down as one of the greatest Chicago Blackhawks players of all time. He might even already be the greatest American-born player who ever lived as well. There is no shortage of achievements in the career of Patrick Kane. He is going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer when he is done.

Patrick Kane has meant a lot to the Chicago Blackhawks throughout his NHL career.

As good as Kane has been for this franchise, he is no longer in the conversation for best NHL player. However, ESPN gave him the ESPY for the best player in the National Hockey League. It is a nice award and he should be proud of it but he doesn’t deserve it. He was nominated with Andrei Vasilevskiy, Auston Matthews, and Connor McDavid. Out of those four players, Kane should legit come in fourth.

This is by no means any disrespect to Patrick Kane. He is still a top-five offensive player in the NHL right now. However, McDavid won the Hart Trophy as league MVP because he had more points than anyone would have dreamed of having in a shortened season. He is the best player in the league by far and he should have been the winner.

Andrei Vasilevskiy is the best active goalie in the NHL. He was nominated for the best goalie (Vezina Trophy) this season and he just won the Conn Smythe as the playoff MVP while winning the Stanley Cup for the second year in a row.

Auston Matthews had 41 goals in 52 games to lead the league in goals for the first time in his NHL career. He is going to do that a lot more as his NHL career progresses. He is truly one of the game’s great players right now. If he challenges Kane for the best American ever one day, nobody should be shocked.

To be honest, Patrick Kane shouldn’t have even been one of the four nominees. Nathan MacKinnon, Brad Marchand, Leon Draisaitl, Sidney Crosby, and David Pastrnak would all be better options than Kane right now. You can’t change the results but you can be annoyed that ESPN doesn’t fully understand the league it just bought into.

This is a reflection of Kane’s career thought. He has been so good that people still look at him as one of the best players in the league. The Blackhawks haven’t done much to help since they won the Stanley Cup in 2015 but that is a story for another day. Either way, this is pretty cool for Kane.