It’s looking more and more likely that the Edmonton Oilers will be without Evander Kane for quite some time next season.
Reports dropped earlier this week that Kane was likely headed to LTIR for at least the start of the 2024-25 season and that he would be undergoing surgery for an injury sustained sometime last season.
Those reports have been confirmed by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on the latest edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast. In his reporting, Friedman reiterated that Kane will require surgery and that he has heard that the recovery time is likely to eclipse one or two months.
With that being said, there is no indication whether or not this will keep Kane out the entire regular season, which would allow the Oilers to circumvent the cap by having him return for the playoffs.
“I just don’t know, at this point in time, if the injury is going to last that long,” Friedman said. “I had some people say to me that there is no guarantee that Kane is going to be out that long.”
It’s fairly late in the offseason to realize that one of your players requires surgery for an injury that took place two months ago at the earliest. Friedman says that the issue that took the Oilers and Kane this long to figure things out was most likely due to finding the right doctor to perform the procedure and syncing up schedules.
“I believe that decision has been made,” Friedman said.
The duration of the injury is going to be supremely important to the Oilers in how they respond to the recent offer sheets handed out to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway by the St. Louis Blues.
Putting Kane on LTIR opens up an additional $5.125 million in cap space for Edmonton, which would make matching both offers much easier for the team. Yet, the cap relief afforded by moving Kane to LTIR is only good for the duration that he is injured.
Once Kane returns to the lineup, the Oilers will lose that $5.125 million in relief and will forced to come up with the extra space some other way. This can be avoided if Kane returns in the playoffs, as the cap disappears in the postseason.
Kane admitted to suffering from a sports hernia at the onset of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs but managed to appear in the team’s first 20 postseason games. He was then shut down in the Stanley Cup Final, appearing in just the first two games of that series.
One of two things must have occurred to force Kane out of the lineup at the penultimate time of the season: he aggravated an existing injury, or something new came up. Either way, it looks like the solution will be surgery and a lengthy stay on LTIR.