Long before he was the leading scorer on a Bowling Green State University hockey team that won a national championship in 1984, Danny Kane was a toddler pushing one of the Clinton Arena's old wooden folding chairs up and down the ice after Clinton Comets practices.

"Privileged" is how Kane, now 63, describes a childhood spent in a hockey-crazed, small town that years later would be crowned "Hockeyville, USA." Back then, the young rink rat whose legendary father, Jack Kane, starred for the beloved, minor-league Comets, found himself in the right place at the right time, and he grew up determined to make the most of that good fortune.

"My dad was my idol, my hero," says Kane, now joining his father as a member of the Greater Utica Sports Hall of Fame. "It was a great experience, growing up in a little town like Clinton. I was privileged, privileged from a hockey standpoint. My father was captain of the Comets, the hottest ticket in town, my mother (Elaine) was the manager of the Clinton Arena. ...

"Hockey was everything to me. That's all I did. It got into my blood."

Danny took the ice for the first time as a three-year-old, joining older brother Todd and later, younger brother Ken in Clinton's well-established youth hockey program. He was a fast learner and skater, progressing from mites to squirts, pee wees, and bantams before making an immediate - albeit short-lived - impact as a record-setting center in his only season with the Clinton Central School varsity.

That team was coached by the late Bernie Burns, a charter member of the New York State High School Hall of Fame whose Clinton teams were 332-130-13 in his 28 years as the Warriors' head coach. And that 1977-78 season ended with Clinton avenging its only two losses with a 2-1 overtime victory over Ithaca in the Section III championship game at a Clinton Arena that was packed to the rafters.

The Warriors went 19-2, and Kane - centering a line that included seniors Steve Lorenz and Tom Wertimer - shattered the school's single-season scoring record, finishing with 31 goals and 33 assists.

Danny had just turned 16, and even though his mother - at least at first - "was having none of it," the decision was made to move to Ottawa and play in the Canadian junior hockey league.

Kane scored 48 goals and had 91 assists in 89 games, and his play earned him a trip to the Bowling Green State University campus in Ohio. During the flight back to Ottawa, Kane said to himself, "That's for me."

At Bowling Green, Danny helped the Falcons go 89-29-8 in his three collegiate seasons.Bowling Green won Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) regular-season titles each one of those seasons. Kane scored 25 goals and earned second-team All-CCHA honors as a sophomore, but it was a "massive" disappointment when the Falcons (28-8-4) didn't make the NCAA Tournament.

"We probably carried a little chip on our shoulder," Kane says of the historic 1983-84 season that followed.

That team had a 17-game winning streak, started 20-1, and finished the regular season with a 30-4-2 record and Kane - the Falcons' leading scorer with 24 goals and 48 assists - would earn first-team all-conference and All-America honors. Bowling Green did not win the CCHA tournament, but did receive an NCAA at-large berth.

The Falcons lost 6-3 in the opener of a two-game, total goals series at Boston University, but tied it with a 4-1 victory and advanced when they scored in the decisive overtime period. Kane then returned to Lake Placid, where he had played more than once as a youth hockey player, and his Falcons would win their first national title on the same sheet of ice where the United States had recorded its greatest hockey win ever.

After a 2-1 semifinal win over Michigan State, fourth-ranked Bowling Green trailed No. 1 Minnesota-Duluth 4-1 midway through the third period of the championship game. The Falcons tied it with 1:47 left in regulation. Three scoreless overtimes followed, but with less than three minutes remaining in the fourth OT, Kane assisted on Gino Cavallini's game-winning goal and after 97 minutes and 11 seconds of hockey - the longest NCAA championship game in history - Bowling Green (34-8-2) had a 5-4 win and its first national title in any sport.

Kane was named to the All-Tournament Team, but after scoring 59 goals in three collegiate seasons, he left Bowling Green and signed a free agent contract with the Calgary Flames. In 1984-85, he played 32 American Hockey League games with Moncton and a year later was loaned to the Chicago Blackhawks' International Hockey League affiliate in Milwaukee, where he had 17 goals and 16 assists in 42 games.

Kane's professional hockey career ended in 1986-87 in Italy, where he scored four goals and had two assists in four games. Now a freight broker for Global Tranz, Danny and his wife Mary have been married for 26 years, and their daughter Caroline attends Boston College. They live in Olmsted, Ohio, a westside Cleveland suburb.