Kane on KHL stint: “You play six minutes a night and they want you to score three goals a game”

Two weeks removed from his short stint with Dinamo Minsk, Evander Kane is reflecting on his time in the KHL.

He’s just not reflecting on it with fondness.

“It didn’t work out,” Kane told the Winnipeg Free Press. “You play six minutes a night and they want you to score three goals a game.”

Kane played 12 games for the Belarusian club, registering just one point while finishing with a minus-8 rating.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

He was suspended one game for an illegal check to the head, blasted by his coach for poor fitness and was described as a player that couldn’t “adapt to hockey in the KHL” upon departing.

Despite all this, Kane did claim some positives. He said it was a good experience to see “what happens over there and how it works,” and called the Minsk fans some of the best in the KHL.

But it sounds as though Kane was always uncomfortable overseas. Aside from ex-Jet Tim Stapleton and a pair of fellow locked-out NHLers in Pekka Rinne and Joe Pavelski, not much was familiar to the young power forward.

“There were some long days in the hotel room,” Kane said. “You can’t watch TV. I don’t think I even turned on my TV the entire time I was over there. I watched movies and downloaded shows for the laptop.

“It wasn’t the most positive experience, but it was an experience for me.”