“I would say we’ve closed the book on last season,” Daly told Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic on Tuesday. “And obviously we’ve done this every year, right? We look into the situations of players who are going to finish the season on LTIR and who might become available early in the playoffs.

“Evander was one of many individuals we looked at last year, and it was a close one, right?” Daly added. “It was a close one as to whether he was capable of playing at the end of the season and didn’t. And we were concerned that if that were the circumstance, in case it may be a circumvention of the salary cap, and we made the Oilers aware of that. I think Evander did not play the first game of the playoffs, but he played the second game of the playoffs. So, in any event, it’s a closed matter. No repercussions.”

“GM Stan Bowman could have used that space to match the St. Louis Blues’ offer sheets for Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg last August, or to trade for their replacements. In fact, when Edmonton traded for Trent Frederic in a three-team deal on March 4, they paid for the New Jersey Devils and Boston Bruins to each retain half on Frederic’s deal, which would have allowed them enough cap space to still activate Kane in the regular season. It wasn’t until they announced the Kane would be unable to return and traded for defenseman Jake Walman that they used up the space created by Kane on LTIR.”