Goals and expectations for Evander Kane in first season with the Canucks in 2025-26

Opportunity is certainly knocking for Evander Kane.

The Vancouver Canucks simply don’t have anyone in their lineup who plays the game the way he does. The veteran winger has made a career of being aggressive and abrasive and has combined that with a knack for scoring goals. However, there are injury concerns after he missed all of last regular season, and there are legitimate questions about focus and discipline, too.

If Kane stays healthy and brings his best every night, there is no doubt he can help the Canucks in his first year with the hockey club and the final year of his current contract. 

This is a player who has been a 20-goal scorer in nine different NHL seasons and a 40-point guy on nine occasions as well. 

After missing all of last season to recover from multiple injuries, Kane stepped into the pressure cooker of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and scored six goals and added six assists in 21 games for the Edmonton Oilers. The 34-year-old believes avoiding the grind of a full regular season allowed his body to heal properly and feels that will help extend his career. 

Acquired for a fourth-round pick in June, Kane handpicked his hometown as his destination of choice when the Oilers looked to shed salary this offseason. A former Vancouver Giant star nearly two decades ago, Kane will now have the chance to play for Vancouver’s NHL team, as well. 

As it stands now, he could be tried as a left winger to add some size and aggression on a line with Elias Pettersson. Or he could shift over to the right side and skate with Filip Chytil. If he gets a top six assignment to open the season, Kane will need to find a way to be productive while staying out of the penalty box. The Canucks certainly want him to play with an edge, but he can’t cross that line as often as he did in the playoffs when he finished third in penalty minutes and second in minor penalties taken. Through the postseason, Kane took a dozen minors and was assessed a pair of misconducts. 

When he stayed out of the box, Kane was effective in the playoffs. The Oilers outscored opponents 16-13 at 5-on-5 with Kane on the ice, and all 12 of his points came at even strength.

Throughout his career, Kane has been a volume shooter, racking up 250 or more shots on goal in five separate seasons. On four other occasions, he has reached the 200-shot mark. He is a career 10% shooter, meaning he’ll likely need to push for 200 shots again next season if he’s going to reach the 20-goal plateau. On a stacked Oilers team, he still managed 220 shots on goal in 2023-24 – his last full regular season.

Kane has never been a huge power play producer. His 14 goals with the man advantage in 64 games in San Jose during the 2019-20 season stand as an outlier with his second-best single-season total (six) coming early in his career in Winnipeg. So it remains to be seen how he figures in the Canucks plans on the power play.

The acquisition of Kane was a low-risk proposition for the Canucks. He is entering the final year of a contract that will see him paid $5.125M. If things go smoothly and he’s been a help, the Canucks can explore the notion of an extension later in the season. If they don’t go as planned, hopefully the club can flip Kane to a playoff-bound team closer to the NHL trade deadline. 

That’s all part of the big picture when it comes to Evander Kane. The narrower view is that he’s in a city he’s familiar with and with a team he wants to be a part of. And now he needs to show up at training camp and prove that he can be everything the Canucks believe he can still be at this late stage of his career. 

Exceeding expectations

For Kane to go above and beyond expectations, he’ll need to push for 25 goals and 45 points. He’ll also need to limit the number of penalties he takes and keep the drama that has followed him throughout his career to a minimum.

Meeting expectations

Based on his career production, Evander Kane will meet expectations if he scores between 15 and 20 goals and brings a physical element on a nightly basis. He’s going to take penalties, but hopefully they are the result of his aggressive play and not reactionary or retaliatory. Also, for Kane to live up to expectations, he needs to stay healthy and play 70 or more games.

Below expectations

The Evander Kane experiment will not have panned out if he doesn’t score 15 goals and if he becomes a distraction in any way. The season could also go sideways if past injuries catch up to Kane and keep him out of the lineup for a significant amount of time.

The Canucks do not have the most robust group of forwards in the NHL, so Evander Kane certainly has a role to play in his first season in Vancouver. But he needs to straddle the fine line between being a thorn in the side of opponents and being a guy who hurts the hockey club with ill-timed penalties. Kane hopes that the move to the West Coast is another fresh start in a career that has had a few of them.

As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz ‘There’s no place like home.’ We’ll see if that holds true for Evander Kane in his first season with the Canucks.