EDMONTON — Are the Edmonton Oilers looking to become the next Vegas Golden Knights? Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for Evander.
With Evander Kane set for surgery “in the next couple of days” to repair a laundry list of midsection maladies, will Kane become the Oilers’ Mark Stone, spending the entire season on Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) only to emerge from the dressing room for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
“I certainly hope not,” Kane said, when asked if pending surgery could cost him the entire regular season. “But I’m not going to put a timeline on myself, a few days away from getting surgery here. That would be a little premature to try to give you those type of answers at this moment.”
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Look — if there is a covert plan in place where everyone knows the outcome but no one is telling, we are not aware of it. In fact, the Oilers made the requisite salary-cap manoeuvres this summer to make sure they had cap space should Kane return mid-season.
But his list of planned surgical repairs is not short. “Both adductors, on each hip. Two torn lower abdominal muscles, and two hernias,” Kane said.
To the credit of both Kane and the Oilers, Kane took the podium on the first day of training camp Wednesday. Many teams would refuse to an interview request for an injured player just days before his surgery, so kudos to Kane and the Oilers for the media availability.
The most obvious question came first to GM Stan Bowman: Why has it taken this long to schedule surgery?
“The way we always handle it with our players, is at the end of the day it’s their body,” Bowman said. “It’s their decision to make. They can listen to the recommendations of doctors, but they have to get to the point to where, in their mind, ‘This is definitely what I want to do.’ It was recently where we reached that point with Evander.”
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Why did it take so long for Kane to get here?
“After going to the last possible day of the NHL season and trying to figure out how I was going to proceed in the offseason,” began Kane, “everybody agreed we wanted to see how things looked after we took some time off. To see if anything settled down, if anything could be rehabbed.
“There were some people who believed that we could possibly get better through rehab, (but) that ended up not being the case,” he explained. “Then you kind of start the due diligence process and trying to find the best surgeon and surgeons out there to do what they do, and hearing from them.
“There was a process that needed to take place to make sure that I was doing the right thing and that I felt comfortable. So we’ve gotten there and (he is) looking forward to getting back healthy.”
Kane consulted at length with Columbus centre Sean Monahan, who had double-hernia surgery when he was in Calgary. And Kane is planning on playing this season, so the Oilers had to make the requisite moves this summer to save salary space for his return.
Bowman moved Cody Ceci and let Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg go to St. Louis on offer sheets, leaving room under the Oilers’ cap to accommodate Kane’s $5.125 million salary.
“We don’t need to use long-term injury right now, we have the salary cap room,” Bowman said. “If we run into a number of injuries that are shorter term in nature, and then we need to bring bodies up, then we have the flexibility to put (Kane) on long-term injury. But part of the reason we made the moves we did over the summer was so that we would not be required to start the season (on LTIR).”
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If there is a grand, covert scheme to sit Kane out the entire season, spend his salary to add players at the Trade Deadline, and then bring Kane back for the playoffs, we are not aware of it. And there are many variables:
First of all, Kane has to have an injury that keeps him out for seven months. If he wishes to return in January or February, and the doctors sign off on that, then Bowman has no choice but to activate the player.
If the Oilers get a bunch of injuries, then Kane will be placed on LTIR simply for salary relief. By the Trade Deadline, if he is not ready to return, then the Oilers could bring on nearly all of his salary in new players — but Kane could not play for the rest of the regular season.
Then there is this scenario: Edmonton has no serious injuries, and their current cap space of $945,833 accrues over the season, growing to about $3 million by the deadline. Then they put Kane on LTIR, use his cap space (minus the $945,833), and end up with around $7 million in cap space to use at the Trade Deadline.
It’s all on the table for the Edmonton Golden Knights, er, Oilers, but the first one on the table is Kane.
He goes under the knife before the weekend.
