The Edmonton Oilers opened training camp on Wednesday and general manager Stan Bowman said that forward Evander Kane will have surgery and won’t be available for the beginning of the 2024-25 season.
Kane battled through a sports hernia throughout the latter part of the 2023-24 season and during the team’s playoff run in the spring. After playing in the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final, he was sidelined for Games 3 to 7 because of the injury.
Back in August, Bob Stauffer of Oilers Now said that there was a “very good chance” that Kane wouldn’t be ready for training camp and that he “might require surgery” but this is the first time that the Oilers have officially confirmed the procedure.
According to Tony Brar of Oilers TV, the date of Kane’s surgery is to be announced and Bowman said “He’s going to be out for a while.”
Despite the long-term nature of the injury and recovery process, the Oilers aren’t planning to place Kane on the Long Term Injured Reserve. Instead, they’ll keep him on the regular Injured Reserve as a rostered player and will be able to accrue cap space leading up to the trade deadline. When a team places a player on the LTIR, they receive a bonus pool on their salary cap to help replace the player but they aren’t able to accrue cap space.
The interesting thing about this confirmation from Bowman is that there still isn’t any sort of timeline for when Kane will be back with the team. In recent seasons, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Vegas Golden Knights have placed key players on the LTIR during the season only to activate them shortly before the start of the playoffs when teams don’t have to adhere to the salary cap.
The Oilers signed Kane to a one-year contract in January of 2021-22 and he scored 22 goals and 39 points with the team over the final 45 games of the regular season before adding 13 goals and 17 points in 15 playoff games. Kane agreed to a four-year contract in the off-season worth $5.125 million annually and he’s scored 40 goals and 72 points over 118 games with the Oilers since.
