Not showing up three days early is apparently cause for alarm in Winnipeg. (Getty Images)

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Hey Winnipeg: You're doing it again.

You're still looking for reasons to drag your best player, forward Evander Kane, through the mud, and you seem to be running out of ideas because this is pretty silly.

NHL training camps don't officially open until Sunday, so players around the league aren't required to report to their teams until, you guessed it, Sunday. Most players are holding their own informal skates. But, again, they're not mandatory and players aren't required to show up until camps officially open. And after the new CBA has been ratified by the NHLPA.

Kane is hardly the only player in the NHL who has yet to show up, but he seems to be the only one facing any sort of criticism for it (well, unless you count Ilya Kovalchuk and his flirtation with staying in the KHL). Heck, Kane isn't even the only Winnipeg Jet to not yet be with the team. Fellow forward Kyle Wellwood hasn't shown up, either.

For some reason, the fact Kane hasn't yet joined the Jets is seen as a big deal by at least one Winnipeg writer -- the Winnipeg Sun's Kirk Penton -- as he put down more than 200 words under the headline "Jets winger Kane still a no-show on the ice."

From the Sun:

Where’s Evander?

It’s a question on the tip of a few tongues around Winnipeg this week. All but four members of the Jets have returned to Winnipeg to skate informally with their teammates, but Evander Kane isn’t one of them.

Considering he’s only a three-hour flight away in Vancouver, some are wondering why he still wasn’t on the ice in Winnipeg on Thursday, although it’s believed he will be there on Friday. Captain Andrew Ladd used Twitter earlier this week to poke some fun at his teammate, asking where he was.

It's kind of like the time New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin started fining players for not showing up to meetings five minutes early. Only dumber.

Kane has been a constant target since the team relocated to Winnipeg before last season. It reached a boiling point a couple of weeks ago when he photographed himself with stacks of money in Las Vegas and posted it on Twitter. This led to at least one column on how the Jets will eventually have to trade him, and the claim that if he is still the face of the franchise the team is bound for a lot of long, cold winters (because apparently 21-year-old forwards who already have 30-goal seasons in the NHL are the worst type of people to build your team around).

Now he's not three days early for a training camp that hasn't started yet.

When will it ever end?

Kane signed a six-year, $30 million contract just before the lockout started in September.

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