Latest update on Evander Kane’s next contract: “Almost done” says agent

Things are moving so quickly for free agent Evander Kane - well much quicker than anyone anticipated.

Let’s go back a few days: the now former San Jose Sharks forward had his contract terminated by the club after he reportedly left the team’s AHL affiliate San Jose Barracuda to fly home to Vancouver for the holidays despite testing positive for COVID-19. Kane was allegedly still in the quarantine phase of his illness but flew home against league protocol anyways and then flew back to San Jose a week later than he was scheduled for. In effect he dipped on his team to spend Christmas at home even while being COVID-19 positive and then stayed at home an extra week… just because? Once Kane arrived back in San Jose he was informed that he had breached his contract and it would be terminated, resulting in him becoming a free agent. This, of course, is on top of all the other drama that Kane has gotten himself into in the past calendar year. Without rehashing everything in order he has filed for bankruptcy, gone through a messy divorce and was suspended for 21 games for providing a fake vaccination card. To be perfectly frank, I’m surprised it took the Sharks this long to finally nail him on something that would enable them to terminate his contract.

This all led to what’s happening at the moment. While Kane and his agent Dan Milstein have officially filed a grievance over the termination of his contract, he is now technically a free agent after passing through waivers unclaimed. TSN insider Pierre LeBrun has reported that there’s “lots of interest from a number of teams” in Kane on a one year free agent deal, and just gave the latest update on the situation after speaking with agent Milstein, who says: `We are interviewing with teams. Almost done. Contract by weekend.’’

On top of that, Tim Peel, who reported today that a deal could be done in the next hours, is now saying that “Kane will be signing in the next few hours. Destination: Edmonton Oilers.”

More to come.