ST. LOUIS _ It was the All-Star Game in a nutshell. A player scores for the hometown Central Division. The crowd at Enterprise Center cheers. And then they realized who they were cheering for.
"I tried to put my hand up to my ear to kind of like hear the boos," Patrick Kane said, grinning. "But then I was showing them, 'Hey, come on! I'm playing with Blues players. I've got the same jersey as them.' "
The tough crowd booed their Blackhawks rival pretty much every chance they got: when his name was mentioned, when he stepped on the ice, when he won Friday's Shooting Stars Challenge, and when he scored in the Central's 10-5 loss to the Pacific Division.
Well, eventually, that is. The cheers came. The boos came. Kane shot up his hand in the universal gesture of "Let me hear more," and even the Blues' social media team got in on the act.
"Did we just cheer for Patrick Kane?" the verified Twitter account asked. The responses were what one would expect.
The Pacific Division eventually defeated the Atlantic, 5-4, in the final in the quest for bragging rights.
As for Kane, he's made no secret of the fact that he thinks the boos are a sign of respect. "It's all in good fun," he said. "Honestly, sometimes, you get booed, you kind of like it a little bit."
Well, the good people of St. Louis must respect Kane a whole lot, then.
