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SAN JOSE — Evander Kane’s reputation as a problem child caught fire during the 2012-13 NHL lockout when he tweeted a picture of himself on a Las Vegas balcony flashing big stacks of $100 bills. Meanwhile, back in his struggling NHL city of Winnipeg, arena staff, restaurant workers and downtown businesses were just trying to make ends meet with hockey on hiatus.

From that bad look splashed all over highlight shows in Canada came more troubling headline fodder: Controversial tweets sent by Kane and accusations of assault — even if no charges were ultimately filed. Kane eventually was traded after he violated the team dress code by wearing a tracksuit to a meeting. Related Articles After plea from HDA and Evander Kane, NHL postpones Thursday and Friday games

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But Kane, who brings a unique blend of speed, size (6-foot-2, 212 pounds) and physicality to the game, is getting a chance to rewrite his narrative in the wake of his trade to the Sharks in late February. He recorded nine goals and 14 points in 17 games, propelling the Sharks into the Stanley Cup playoffs for the 13th time in 14 years.

Kane’s coaches and teammates are only saying good things about him. The fanbase is hoping the team re-signs him to a longterm contract when he enters unrestricted free agency on July 1. Kane, meanwhile, insists that he has grown up since he developed a reputation for being hockey’s bad boy early in his career.

“Do I see this as an opportunity to be viewed in a different light? Absolutely,” Kane said. “I haven’t lost or forgotten where I came from. I just think that most people don’t know my story.”

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Kane’s relationship to hockey is stereotypically Canadian even though he lacked a stereotypically Canadian upbringing. The 26-year-old’s love affair with the sport is tied to his relationship with his father, Perry Kane, who devoted most of his adult life to molding his son into a professional hockey player, an opportunity that eluded him as a black Canadian growing up in the 1970s.

Perry Kane, known as the “Chocolate Rocket” during his playing days in East Preston, Nova Scotia, heard racial slurs nearly every time he stepped onto the ice in youth hockey. After high school, Kane received tryouts with three storied junior hockey franchises in the Ontario Hockey League, hockey’s equivalent to the SEC in college football. Kane believes he got turned away when teams discovered to their surprise that he was black; the coach who set up the tryouts had left out that detail.

After playing Junior A hockey in Nova Scotia, Kane shared his passion for the game with his son, Evander, teaching him how to skate at age 3. By 8, Evander was begging his parents to play organized hockey. His father said he couldn’t join a team until he turned 10. But Kane’s mother, Sheri, a former volleyball player at the University of Calgary, thought differently.

“My mom signed me up behind his back,” Evander Kane said.

Nevertheless, Perry Kane jumped on board and became his coach, playing an Earl Woods-like role in his son’s pursuit of an NHL career.

At age 11, Evander started working out with his dad in the rigors of a boxing gym. By 14, he was spending two hours in the gym four days a week doing push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, step-ups, jumping rope, punching speed bags, heavy bags, shadow boxing and sparring.

Kane also put his son in the pool three days a week, making him swim 30 laps in 30 minutes.

He was a disciplinarian at home, as well, requiring Evander and his two sisters, Brea and Kyla, to get all A’s and B’s.

But Evander Kane insists that he embraced his father’s strict training program.

“As much as I was a young kid, and you do what your dad tells you to do, I wanted to do it,” Kane recalled. “I knew I wanted to play in the NHL by the time I was 5 years old.”

But as Kane worked his way up from house league to one of the world’s top peewee programs, the North Shore Winter Club in Vancouver, he quickly learned his experience in youth hockey would be different than that of the average Canadian for a couple of reasons: He was poor and he was black.

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Like his father, Evander Kane heard every racial slur from ice level in youth hockey. He can still hear the venom in the voices of parents who were yelling at him while he was sitting in the penalty box during a tournament.

“They were screaming terrible, terrible names at a 10-year-old kid,” Kane recalled.

In addition to racial slurs, Perry Kane recalls hearing parents scream “break his legs” and “kill him” as Evander carried the puck.

“I was sad for hockey,” Perry Kane said. “I didn’t think that that type of hatred could come to the forefront just from watching 9- and 10-year-olds play hockey.”

After Evander scored the goal that clinched the tournament for his team, the 10-year-old skated to center ice, turned to the crowd and bowed, foreshadowing the defiance that would come to define his career in Winnipeg. Kane will never forget the advice he received from his father on how to approach the racism he confronted in youth hockey.

“At the end of the day that will just make you mentally tougher. It will help you with other things in life,” Kane said. “We had the attitude of, bring it on.”

As racism presented emotional obstacles, the challenges related to the family’s income level proved to be more tangible once Kane joined the North Shore Winter Club at age 11.

Hockey is among the most expensive sports for kids to play, especially in Canada, making it an increasingly elitist game. A survey conducted by Hockey Canada in 2011-12 revealed that the average hockey parent in Canada spent $3,000 per year on equipment, travel and training. The cost can spike to $15,000 for kids on AAA teams, such as the North Shore Winter Club.

The price tag proved to be hefty for the Kanes, who rented the upstairs floor of a house in southeast Vancouver. It had just two bedrooms and one bathroom for five people, so Kane shared a room with his sisters. One side of the room was painted blue and the other side pink. Kyla and Brea shared a bed.

His father owned a bakery and bread delivery service and sold cars on the side at a dealership. His mother was a dental assistant.

“All the money went back into hockey and the girls’ dance teams. It was tough,” Perry Kane said.

Kane recalled a time when he lacked the funds to write a $500 check to pay for the uniform required by the North Shore Winter Club. A team manager called him and said the other parents were tired of Evander “skating off the backs of the other parents.”

“As kids, I don’t think that we were really aware of his financial situation,” said Sharks goalie Martin Jones, who played on Kane’s team with North Shore Winter Club.

“Hockey’s a tough sport to play at a high level because it’s expensive — really expensive.”

Money also factored into Kane’s junior hockey career — the Canadian equivalent to playing bigtime college football or basketball. When the Moose Jaw Warriors told Kane that they were planning to draft him with the 17th pick in the 2006 Western Hockey League draft, his father jumped on the phone and scared them off.

“I told them that we can’t afford to fly to Saskatchewan to see him play. We’re poor. We’ll pass,” Perry Kane said of the city 1,000 miles to the east. “I told my wife and Evander what I said and they were blue mad at me.

“That night I slept on the Chesterfield.”

But Perry Kane got redemption the next morning as he pulled into the parking lot at his bakery.

“I hear on the radio, the Vancouver Giants have drafted Evander Kane with the 19th overall pick,” Kane said. “I drove back home and my wife was standing at the top of the stairs crying.”

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Kane’s career took off with the Giants. The team won the Memorial Cup, Canada’s junior hockey championship, in his first season, as he climbed up to a second line role as a 15-year-old. In 2008-09, he set a team record by scoring 48 goals in 61 games.

That summer, he smashed the glass ceiling that obstructed his father’s career, becoming the highest black player ever selected in the NHL draft when the Atlanta Thrashers took him with the fourth overall pick. (The Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets two years later.)

But after he reached the 30-goal mark as a 20-year-old with the Jets in 2011-12, his promising career stagnated as the off-ice distractions started to pile up.

Today is the 3 year anniversary of the infamous #moneyphone #hadtodoit pic.twitter.com/586ecBHWmV — Evander Kane (@evanderkane_9) November 21, 2014

The trouble that started with the tweeted picture from Vegas — he was emulating a pose from his boxing idol Floyd Mayweather, whom he directed the tweet to — gained steam with a homophobic tweet toward then-Toronto Raptors star Chris Bosh and an Instagram post that showed him doing pushups with stacks of money on his back.

Things finally reached a tipping point in Winnipeg when Dustin Byfuglien tossed Kane’s tracksuit into the shower, triggering his trade to the Buffalo Sabres.

In Buffalo, things only got worse. He faced accusations of sexual assault for an alleged incident in a hotel and harassment and disorderly conduct for reportedly grabbing two female patrons at a bar and pulling their hair.

The sexual assault accusation failed to produce charges after a district attorney determined that an examination of the facts, which included forensic and toxicological tests, produced no evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Kane also got his harassment and disorderly conduct charges dismissed after he entered into a plea agreement.

The team also suspended him one game for missing practice after partying at NBA All-Star Weekend in Toronto and his character was questioned by a teammate who called him “selfish” during a fight at practice.

Although he believes that most of his transgressions have been blown out of proportion, Kane admits that he’s grown up over the past few years. A lot of the antics reflect the behavior of a young man who is suddenly rich and free after growing up poor in a heavily regimented environment.

“That might be part of it. I’ve obviously matured as I’ve gotten older. You’re 18 years old and you’re making $1 million a year,” he said. “I probably should have known better living in a small-fishbowl city in the middle of Canada and I’m a non-white player. How is that going to look?

“Maybe when you come from money, it’s easier to be more low-key with it at a young age because it’s just your normal life. For me, it’s something that I worked so hard for. It’s something I’m proud of.”

Kane’s history didn’t deter Sharks coach Pete DeBoer from wanting the embattled forward on his team when he became available at the trade deadline. DeBoer received his first coaching job from Jets head coach Paul Maurice back in 1994, and his longtime friend gave him valuable insight on Kane’s checkered history in Winnipeg.

“Paul Maurice spoke really highly of Evander — really highly. That was good enough for me,” DeBoer said. “When you’re around players every day, all year, there’s always little things that come up. Some of them get blown out of proportion. Some of them don’t and are real. I can tell you that Paul had nothing but good things to say about him and it was a trusted opinion. It wasn’t just smoke.” Related Articles Boughner, Wilson explain how they plan to bring Sharks back to contention

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Nowadays, Kane is leading a more low-key lifestyle. Instead of flaunting his money on social media, he’s posting pictures of his teacup chihuahua, Penelope. He’s determined to make a splash in his first appearance in the playoffs after nine seasons in the NHL, and he should be highly sought after in free agency this summer.

Kane wants the next chunk of his career to be defined by his dominance on the ice — and a solid reputation away from it.

“I still have a good 11 seasons left. That’s definitely more than enough time to change some people’s minds and leave some different impressions,” he said. “A few years ago, I was a little more hard-headed. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that your reputation is important. Everyone wants to be viewed in the light that they see themselves in.”