By Paul Lane
CNHI
NORTH TONAWANDA —
An ESPN.com reporter followed Patrick Kane during his jaunt around Western New York earlier this month with the Stanley Cup.
Scott Burnside’s final verdict? Seeing as the Buffalo native hasn’t had the Western New York taken out of him, perhaps Kane has been redeemed in the eyes of his hometown supporters.
Burnside followed Kane to Niagara Falls, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and a ball hockey game with his former neighbors. All the while, Kane — who scored the Cup-winning goal for the Chicago Blackhawks this past June — apparently began to clear his name after last year’s cabbie-beating incident downtown.
“Yeah, I think about it, for sure,” he said of the incident. “It’s something that will stick with me the rest of (my) life. Hopefully, you can do some things to change that so you don’t have that perception from people.”
Kane also took the trophy to his grandparents’ graves and to his favorite childhood pizzeria while confessing that he’s started reading the “Twilight” books.
“During a couple of days in Buffalo, we saw a young player who seems to understand that there is a balance between accepting the responsibilities of stardom and being a young man,” Burnside wrote. “And if Kane has come to some kind of epiphany, it appears that his friends have likewise come to understand that sharing the spotlight with Kane means sharing the responsibility that comes with that.”
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A North Tonawanda woman was recently featured in a USA Today story about “ghost cars” nabbing rule-breaking motorists.
The story was about police forces using unmarked patrol cars and other stealth vehicles to catch speeders, drunk drivers and other law-breakers. Interviewed for the story was 32-year-old NT resident Reanna Darone, who was pulled over by one such vehicle for speeding last month.
“He was right on my back,” she told the newspaper. “I thought it was just a regular person who followed too close. It had no bubble lights, nothing. Next thing I knew, I heard the siren.”
Law enforcement officials said in the story said using unmarked helps to catch offenders who would otherwise alter their routines if they saw marked patrol cars.
