One of the questions looming over the Edmonton Oilers throughout the 2024-25 campaign has been the health of winger Evander Kane. Will he play this season?
Many have assumed that he won’t and that the Oilers will reap the benefits of the Long-Term Injury Reserve through a salary cap bonus cushion. If Kane misses the entire regular season, the Oilers can essentially replace his $5.125 million cap hit with other additions. They can even bring him back in the playoffs when there isn’t a salary cap, as other teams have done in the past with injured star players.
Of course, that’s only an assumption. The Oilers still don’t know whether Kane will be healthy enough to play during the regular season, so they can’t yet commit to any pre-deadline plans around using his LTIR space.
Earlier this week, Frank Seravalli noted on Daily Faceoff Live that the Oilers are “hoping they can get an answer on Evander Kane’s health by March 1st to be able to make the appropriate decisions by [the trade deadline] next Friday.” Seravalli also appeared on Oilers Now with Bob Stauffer and elaborated that the organization hasn’t committed to dancing around the salary cap as has been assumed.
“I think they’re walking on pins and needles, or walking on eggshells, I should say, about how much they can possibly bite off given the LTIR situation.It’s been a lengthy and long road of recovery with multiple different surgeries for Evander Kane. I think people in the fanbase have sort of provided the ‘Wink wink, oh yeah, of course, there’s a chance he could come back, wink wink. But, really he’s going on LTIR, isn’t that right?’And I’m like, no, that’s not the truth. The truth is the Oilers don’t feel very comfortable about this situation one way or the other. And in the end, what it really might come down to is the Oilers don’t have that LTIR money to spend and they could only really make one acquisition.”
Kane scored 24 goals and 44 points in 77 regular-season games for the Oilers in 2023-24 while playing through nagging injuries and he added four goals and eight points in 20 games in the playoffs. Those injuries wound up cutting Kane’s playoff run short, as the winger was sidelined during Games 3 to 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
When the Oilers arrived at training camp in September, it was announced that Kane was going to miss the beginning of the season to undergo surgery on each hip, two torn lower abdominal muscles, and two hernias. Kane said that he took some time in the summer to see if his injuries would improve through rehab and went for multiple opinions from doctors before ultimately deciding to have surgery shortly before the start of the season.
There was no timetable for Kane’s return after his surgery in September but it was originally reported that he was expected to return at some point in early 2025. That timeline got kicked back in December when it was reported Kane wouldn’t be back until March at the earliest.
Come January, the Oilers announced Kane was set to undergo another surgery, this time on his knee. The team gave a four-to-eight week recovery window for Kane’s knee surgery and also said that it would pause his recovery from the previous operation.
Given he wasn’t expected to return from the first surgery until March and then he had another surgery done on top of that, it seems unlikely Kane will suit up for the Oilers before the end of their regular season on April 16.
Again, that’s just an assumption. As Ryan Rishaug noted on Twitter during the team’s loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday, the Oilers will wait until doctors to make a final call on Kane before they make a call on what they’re going to do before the trade deadline.
“My sense is team doctors will evaluate [Evander Kane] and his progress as the trade deadline approaches and establish a likely timeline for his return.If they feel he’s likely to be cleared before the end of the season, Bowman would not use the cap space needed to activate Kane. If the timeline for return doctors recommend is after the season then he’d be able to use the space.I don’t believe they know at this point which way this is going to go. They’ll play it by the book and see what doctors recommend on a return date.”
The Oilers are mired in a season-long four-game losing streak and things aren’t getting any easier with road games against the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes on tap. The team will return home next week with only a couple more games left on the schedule before the March 7 trade deadline.
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