DETROIT — It’s just after 6:30 p.m., and while it may only be warmups, there is a buzz inside Little Caesars Arena.

Along the wall near the Red Wings bench, Detroit’s newest superstar scoops up a puck and flips it into the first row. This is Patrick Kane’s debut in a Red Wings uniform, and a sellout crowd has packed the building for the occasion. Out on the concourse, some fans are already wearing his jersey before he’s taken his first shift. Even in Kane’s new locker room, his arrival has meant something.

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“His persona and aura that he kind of carries around, you can really feel it just being around him,” defenseman Jake Walman said Thursday morning. “It’s the first, like, superstar that I’ve ever played with.”

They call Kane “Showtime,” and that’s what all these people have come to see. More specifically, they’ve come to see if he can recapture his magic coming off hip resurfacing surgery, with little positive precedent in the sport.

Across the ice from the bench, a row of young fans sees Kane draw near and erupts, banging on the glass. Kane fist bumps the glass in return, making at least one of their nights.

As the team takes its line rushes, Kane links up with an old running mate, Alex DeBrincat, on something of a give-and-go, which DeBrincat roofs into the net. The chance to rediscover his chemistry with DeBrincat was one of the factors that led Kane to Detroit, picking the up-and-coming Red Wings as the team with which he’d make this return.

Kane takes some tight turns and looks fluid. He stick-handles for a bit on his own, and after walking in for a shot, he and DeBrincat alternate setting each other up for one-timers, two apiece, across the slot.

By 6:45 p.m., most of his new teammates have gotten off the ice. But Kane remains until the final seconds, flipping one last puck into the stands and exiting the ice just before Larkin. His long road back from surgery is now complete.

Now, it’s Showtime.

7:05 p.m.: As the Red Wings make their pregame introductions, Detroit coach Derek Lalonde has set Kane up for a proper Hockeytown welcome. In Kane’s first meeting with the local media, he said he felt that he needed to be in a city where hockey was popular — some place you could get the crowd excited.

If the sellout for his debut wasn’t enough, the locals let Kane know just how excited they were with a roaring ovation as he was introduced as a starter. Soon after, a fan appears on the jumbotron with a sign that reads “Showtime in the D.”

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7:08 p.m: The puck is down, and Kane is out there with DeBrincat and Joe Veleno. The Red Wings are playing the lowly San Jose Sharks, one of the league’s bottom-dwellers this season, but the puck drop has a big-game feel due to the anticipation.

The first shift, though, keeps it simple. Kane connects on a stretch pass to DeBrincat, but nothing comes of it and the shift comes and goes rather quickly. Kane is off the ice in 37 seconds. But the first one is out of the way.

7:12 p.m.: While it’s never a sure thing whether two players will be able to snap right back into chemistry together, Kane sure seems to know where DeBrincat is early. He springs him on another transition pass, and then, not long after, takes the extra beat to slow play down and find DeBrincat as a trailer.

It looks like for a moment this one will lead to a scoring chance, but as DeBrincat cuts to the slot, a poke check stifles the look. An eager crowd groans, but the early signs are positive.

For all the concern around Kane’s hip, the biggest reason for optimism is that he would still have his all-world hockey brain. And a couple shifts in, that’s already evident.

7:25 p.m.: Off a faceoff, DeBrincat fires a puck over the net, and Kane gets to the ensuing loose puck to send it to Shayne Gostisbehere at the point. Gostisbehere was a rookie when Kane won the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2015-16, and a pretty good one at that — he was runner-up for the Calder Trophy. They’re both at very different stages of their careers now, but the hope is that the two of them can help bring the kind of dynamic element that the Red Wings have lacked for the better part of the last decade.

Gostisbehere sends it back to Kane on the flank, and he stick-handles for a moment before firing a shot wide. The Red Wings retrieve it, though, and Gostisbehere again finds Kane on the flank, where he dishes a pass to DeBrincat at the top of the left circle. The shot’s blocked, but here’s what you loved to see: Kane calling for the puck already, just over 10 minutes into the game. He’s not going to get his complete swagger back immediately, but for a player like him, you want to see him wanting the puck.

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Earlier in the shift, he also took a bit of contact on the retrieval. It wasn’t a thundering hit, but it’s still a moment you’re watching for after any kind of major rehab.

“I’ve been practicing it for a couple months, so obviously it’s different in a game, but you never really know what to expect,” Kane said. “Hits might be a little bit harder, little bit more forceful, but overall felt fine.”

7:35 p.m.: The Sharks are putting the pressure on, outshooting the Red Wings 12-4 through the first 15 minutes. Shortly after a San Jose power play, though, comes Kane’s first big chance of the night. Larkin launches a puck down the ice, banking it off the end boards to DeBrincat, who finds veteran Jeff Petry with Kane trailing him. Petry has a tough play to make with a defender on him, and the defender gets just enough of his pass to Kane to stop it from getting to him in stride. Kane corrals it, though, and gets a shot off, but Mackenzie Blackwood shuts it down.

8:01 p.m.: It’s the second period now, and the Red Wings are headed to the power play. That’s one of the ways Kane can help Detroit the most — using his vision to carve up opponents. The Sharks take the draw and muster a rush with Kane defending, perhaps an early test of the hip, and he gets a takeaway.

At the other end, Kane sets up on the right flank and sees David Perron across the slot. He fires a pass to him, but it’s tipped out of play by a Sharks defender. The first unit comes off the ice.

8:06 p.m.: Kane is really heating up now, taking another shift with DeBrincat and Larkin. He makes a great read and picks off a pass in the corner on the forecheck and quickly finds DeBrincat in the slot. DeBrincat very nearly finds Larkin at the back door, if not for another San Jose stick disrupting the play at the last second. The shift continues, though, and after Kane works a mini-cycle with Larkin, he looks for Ben Chiarot streaking to the back post. Then, as Detroit again continues the possession, Kane gets a slot look of his own set up by DeBrincat.

And when that shot misses and clears the zone, Detroit resets, and Kane finds Klim Kostin in the slot for a Grade-A chance that Kostin rings off the post. It’s a monster shift. He looks an awful lot like Patrick Kane.

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8:15 p.m.: Kostin doesn’t have to dwell on the post for long, winning a puck battle in front of the net for the Red Wings’ first goal of the game. And it’s well-timed. As big an impact as Kane could make in Detroit, his arrival does mean someone will soon have to come out of the lineup when J.T. Compher returns from a minor injury. Kostin is a prime candidate, as a lower-lineup player without much of a special-teams role. Making an impact with an early goal is big for his case to stay in the lineup.

8:18 p.m.: Kane finds DeBrincat for another Grade-A chance, this time getting to a puck below the goal line and firing it to DeBrincat in the left circle. It’s deflected out of play.

8:23 p.m.: The Red Wings are on the board again, with another of Detroit’s current fourth-liners, Daniel Sprong — who gave up his jersey number for Kane — firing a puck to the net from the wall and getting a great bounce off Michael Rasmussen for a 2-0 lead. It’s a fortunate tally, but it opens the floodgates. Rasmussen tips another puck in 13 seconds later, this one off a Chiarot point shot. And 36 seconds after that, Lucas Raymond buries a pass from Chiarot to make it 4-0 Red Wings.

San Jose pulls Blackwood from the net. The rout is on. Right?

8:28 p.m.: With Detroit up four goals, the Sharks’ Marc-Edouard Vlasic takes an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and the Red Wings head to the power play, looking to pour it on.

But as Larkin looks for DeBrincat off an entry, the pass is broken up and the Sharks take it the other way for a short-handed goal. And then a crazy thing happens. The Sharks get another odd-man rush, and Fabian Zetterlund buries this one, too. It’s two short-handed goals on the same power play for San Jose, sapping Detroit’s surge of momentum.

And then, just 10 seconds after the power play expires, the Sharks get a third goal off another two-on-one, this time with Nico Sturm doing the damage. It’s 4-3, after six combined goals in a span of 3 minutes and 1 second — just one second off the NHL record.

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And by the end of the period, the score will be tied 4-4, with Sturm adding another goal in the final 30 seconds of the period.

9:05 p.m.: Kane gets his best chance of the night less than five minutes into the third period, picking off a pass in the offensive zone slot that leaves him one-on-one with Sharks backup Kaapo Kahkonen. It’s another great read, and now he’s got one man to beat and a crowd ready to erupt.

He stick-handles and beats Kahkonen … but rings it off the post.

But while it would have made for a heck of a signature moment in his Detroit debut, Kane is level-headed about it when asked after the game.

“As an offensive player, you always want to create chances, right?” he says. “So, you can live and die with hitting the post or not capitalizing on your chances, but you want to create and you want to play the right way for your team, too. Would have been nice to bury that, though.”

9:21 p.m.: Off a drop pass from DeBrincat, Kane gets the puck and rips a shot high. The Red Wings regroup, though, and Kane once again finds himself with the puck in a dangerous area, in the low right circle. He tries a backhand pass to Rasmussen cutting through the slot, but it’s off-target in his feet. If the pass was on, it could have well set up a hat trick for Rasmussen.

Kane commits a turnover with a casual backhand pass at the defensive blue line later in the shift but redeems himself by breaking up the ensuing chance with a good stick and gets the exit and a safe dump-in for a change.

9:47 p.m.: Kane and Perron walk into the Red Wings’ media room. The mood is subdued after the Red Wings fall in overtime, 6-5. A loss isn’t the ideal setting for an individual to talk about himself.

“Overall, I think for me it was just fun to get out there and play again,” he says. “Obviously would have been a little bit better getting the win.”

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He takes responsibility for the fateful failed power play that turned the game in the Sharks’ favor. He says the physical side “felt fine,” and that for him, it will be more about getting his timing, understanding the team structure “and then doing what I do when I get the puck.” He calls himself “a little bit tentative tonight at times,” but overall, says he felt good.

In all, Kane played 16:33, a bit more than the Red Wings planned to play him coming in. That speaks to their satisfaction with his night as well.

“He looked very comfortable,” Lalonde said. “Obviously a little rusty, he probably, (with) a little more polish to his game, he could have had three (or) four points. He’s probably kicking himself that he didn’t. So I think certainly a positive for him tonight.”

Those points left on the ice speak to the rust, sure, but they also speak to how involved Kane was, even in his first game back from a major surgery. Kane’s right that there were moments of tentativeness. But some sequences made you believe he really might be able to look something like the Patrick Kane of old.

Something like Showtime.

(Photo of Patrick Kane: Dave Reginek / NHLI via Getty Images)