CHICAGO — Even if what Evander Kane and Stan Bowman believe comes to fruition, that the veteran left winger will play for the Edmonton Oilers this season, one pertinent question remains.
Exactly what type of player will the Oilers and Bowman, the team’s GM, get in Kane when that time comes?
An already muddy situation and timeline for a return to action for Kane just got murkier with Friday’s announcement that he had knee surgery in Edmonton the day before.
“It was a surprise because it wasn’t an injury-type situation,” Bowman said of the surgery being needed. “This is just a random thing that came up.
“Once it was obvious that he had something, he had to get a couple opinions and decide how best to handle it.”
Speaking over a video call, Kane called the procedure a knee scope, which was done to fix a problem he said first surfaced a few weeks after his significant abdominal surgery in September.
Though he said there was no major structural work done on Thursday, Kane has to halt rehabilitation on the previous injury for the next four to eight weeks to recover from his knee surgery.
That just pushes any potential season debut back even further.
Kane is insistent that he’ll suit up for the Oilers this season, but when that’ll happen is still anyone’s guess. He hasn’t even skated since the morning of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in Sunrise, Fla. That was June 24.
“I feel a thousand times better,” Kane said. “Skating will probably be the biggest indicator of how good I truly feel once I get back on the ice. I feel that it’s going to go really well once I do get back on the ice.”
No one has any firm idea, though.
Bowman is optimistic but isn’t prepared to bank on Kane’s return. And so, Bowman has been working on two plans — one if it appears as though he’s getting Kane back before the regular season ends and another if it appears he won’t.
Bowman is clear: His preference is to have a healthy Kane in the lineup at the earliest possible moment. The salary cap is the secondary priority.
“We want him back as soon as he’s ready to be back,” Bowman said. “He’s had some big procedures here.”
The Oilers held their pro scouting meetings in Boston earlier this week, two months ahead of the March 7 trade deadline.
There are complications at hand about Kane’s status.
If he’s eventually ruled out for the rest of the regular season, the Oilers will have no more than $5,124,947 in cap space via LTIR. That would be almost all of Kane’s $5.125 million cap hit that they set their LTIR pool at when they named their season-opening roster.
If there’s any chance Kane might return before the playoffs, it would behoove the Oilers to keep him on their active roster — which they’ve done for most of the season. Injuries, either significant ones or too many of them, are out of anyone’s control and would force them into LTIR. That happened earlier in the season when Viktor Arvidsson and Zach Hyman were sidelined.
The Oilers are accruing cap space right now and have been for most of the season. They’re carrying 22 healthy players — plus Kane — so they have just over $1 million in deadline cap space, per PuckPedia. But Bowman said Friday that he plans to remove a player from the roster soon, perhaps as early as the end of the road trip.
If all goes accordingly, Bowman is earmarking to have about $3 million in deadline cap space. He considers the difference between that roughly $3 million potential accrued figure and the $5.1 million from the LTIR pool to be negligible. The reason: The cap hit of any player they acquire is prorated when a team isn’t in LTIR. Only $1 million in space is required to fit in a $4 million player if a quarter of the season remains, for instance.
“In either scenario, you can make it work,” Bowman said. “I don’t think it changes as much as people think it changes.
“It’s not dramatically different.”
Still, it would be nice to know how to proceed.
The one saving grace is Bowman and the Oilers have the benefit of time. Well, some time. Bowman would like to know with a high degree of certainty whether Kane will play regular-season games by late February or the first few days of March at the absolute latest.
He and his staff must determine by then not only how much cap space they have — and in which form — but also the type of player(s) to target.
That’s the most important part here. Kane’s status determines quite a bit.
Kane is a near unicorn in the sport today when he’s healthy, engaged and at his best. You can count on one hand the number of players in the NHL that can provide his power-forward style with a high-end offensive punch. What he showed from January to May 2022 is the perfect example. There’s no one like him on the Oilers roster with due respect to 39-year-old Corey Perry.
That’s why Bowman is giving him every chance to return and hopes he will.
But Kane hasn’t been the same player since getting his wrist sliced by Pat Maroon’s skate blade in November 2022 and has dealt with a slew of injuries ranging from nagging to excruciating.
He’s convinced that taking months to fix everything that ails him will do him a world of good. Bowman has faith that’ll be the case, too.
“He’s not going to be back and playing until he’s ready — whether that’s March, April, May or June,” the GM said. “He’s not going to come back at 50 percent.”
There’s being perfectly healthy to play, though, and then there’s being impactful. Those are two very different things.
There are a few recent examples of players going on LTIR for a substantial period, showing up for the playoff opener and playing key parts on Stanley Cup champions.
Patrick Kane missed the last two months of the 2014-15 season with a broken collarbone and then averaged a point per game in the playoffs.
Nikita Kucherov sat out the entire truncated 56-game 2021 season with a hip injury and had 32 points in 23 games.
Mark Stone was also held out for the final two months of the 2022-23 campaign after having back surgery and recorded 24 points in 22 contests.
Patrick Kane was 26. Kucherov was 27. Stone was 30.
Evander Kane is 33 and has missed significantly more time than any of them. Just ask Connor Brown how long it can take to feel like yourself any after a long layoff from injury.
“You’d rather have him playing now,” Bowman said. “These guys (the rest of the players) have been playing all year. It’s not an ideal situation.
“How will he handle coming in with trying to ramp it up? I don’t know.”
No one does. That’s the most important question of all, and it’s one that has no answer.
(Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
