Okay Confirmed Evander Kane Is A Playoff Player

In his ninth season, in his fourth city, Evander Kane had played 574 games without ever making the playoffs. (That was just five games shy of Carolina's Jeff Skinner, who now has no real challengers.) So when Kane earlier this week called himself a 'playoff player,' he was talking style, not experience.

Kane is still just 26, though it feels like he's been around forever, and his move from Buffalo to San Jose was the biggest splash of a pretty mild trade deadline. And Kane's been excellent, scoring nine goals and five assists in 17 games with the Sharks and pacing San Jose's late surge to yet another remarkably quiet 100-point season.

But while the playoffs are a different beast, an unfamiliar one to Kane, he brought more of the same in the Sharks' 3-0 Game 1 win over Anaheim. The left winger got San Jose on the board with a one-timer from Joe Pavelski with a two-man advantage:

Kane and Pavelski doubled the lead just six minutes and change later, turning a turnover into a 2-on-1 and pretty much sealing things up theree, because Martin Jones looked excellent in net.

Kane can do, well, a little bit of everything. He's big, he's fast, he's tough, and he can score''sives us an extra layer of everything,' center Chris Tierney said of Kane'and he thinks that roundedness will serve him well in the postseason, when everything tightens up.

'I've said it in the past. I think I'm a playoff player,' Kane said on Monday. 'I've watched the playoffs and when I look at the style of play and it's something I was jealous because I wasn't involved in it. Now I get that opportunity and I have to back those words up.

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