Oilers
The Edmonton Oilers’ Warren Foegele (37) battles the Chicago Blackhawks’ Tyler Johnson (90) and Connor Murphy (5) during first period NHL action at Rogers Place, in Edmonton Tuesday Dec. 12, 2023. Photo by David Bloom PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM /David Bloom/Postmedia
Let’s take it as a given for a moment that Edmonton Oilers power forward Evander Kane will not be healthy to play until the 2025 playoffs, which will free up $5.1 million in cap space for the Oilers at the trade deadline.
I’ll suggest this isn’t much of a stretch given that everything about Kane’s medical history has been slow, long and drawn out this season, with him not getting abdominal surgery until October, and not getting knee surgery until January. It’s becoming hard to imagine things will suddenly speed up and that he’ll be back for the regular season, especially given the obvious advantage to the Oilers if he sits out until the playoffs.
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And, in fact, for Kane’s recovery, that may well be the best bet.
On Oilers Now, NHL insider Frank Servalli suggested the Oilers now have a great argument to bring back Kane only for the playoffs. “I can’t speak for the Oilers and what they’re thinking, but if I’m Edmonton and I’m looking at this situation, this latest knee surgery for Evander Kane, that clears up to me any question about whether or not anyone would put up a fight or challenge if Evander Kane was out until the playoff started,” Servalli told host Bob Stauffer. “That abdominal surgery (earlier this season) was no joke. And he, you know, even before this popped up, when I had asked around about what the timeline was for Kane, I was told sometime in mid-March was kind of the earliest of where he was trending. And so if you tack on four weeks to that or you tack on six weeks to that, whatever this timeline is for the new surgery (on his knee), well, that puts you sometime in the playoffs. And so to me, what this does is really kind of resets the clock. It gives the Oilers additional support to make any medical claim that they might need to do on the LTIR if anyone, including the league, were to challenge this.”