6:00pm and all is well at the KK compound. Electricity restored after 48 hours.

from Sportsnet,

In his last four games, Kane has seven goals and 10 points (including a hat trick against the Maple Leafs on Sunday). There’s no clearer way to send a message to those doubting your ability to help a contender than that.

As noted by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman during Friday’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast (recorded Thursday), Kane’s agent, Pat Brisson, has been quoted as saying the winger “hasn’t made a decision yet” about where he’d like to be moved.

The 34-year-old is in full control and, much like we saw last year with Claude Giroux (who also had a NMC as a pending UFA) informing Philadelphia he’d only go to the Florida Panthers, it appears that Kane may only have eyes for one club: the New York Rangers.

Can New York make space? They’re currently sitting out two players, forwards Vitali Kravtsov and Jake Leschyshyn, for what they’ve called “roster management reasons.” (Between Kravtsov’s $875,000 cap hit and Leschyshyn’s $2.3 million, those two players account for about $3M.) Here’s how Friedman explained his understanding of the situation:

“I heard that Chris Drury was calling teams and asking if there was a way he could move about $1.6 million in cap room. And if he can’t do that in a trade, I think we all need to watch the waiver wire on Friday. And that’s going to tell us what exactly is going on here,” said Friedman. “So, the fact that Brisson is still being quoted, as we tape this podcast on Thursday night, as saying that Patrick Kane has not made his decision, it says to me that the mechanism is slowly turning and everything has to get into place before anyone’s making any pronouncement here.”

What if it’s not New York…? The Rangers, after all, are far from the only interested party.

“It's not just Vegas and Dallas and the Rangers and Carolina. It’s a whole bunch of teams now, this week, reaching out and saying, ‘Look, does he want to come to us? Because if he does, we’ll see if we can find a way to make it work,’” said Friedman. “I think the list of interested teams actually grew. However, I’m not sure his list of teams he’s interested in grew by very much. And I think we all know, if the Rangers can get it done, they’re the favourites. If the Rangers actually do this and get the room and he doesn’t go there, jaws are going to drop.”

continue for more trade talk