Evander Kane will take the surgical route in an attempt to deal with a lingering injury.
The Edmonton Oilers forward is scheduled for sports hernia surgery in the next 10 days, Sportsnet’s Mark Spector reported Friday.
Kane, 33, played through the injury last season, though it eventually sidelined him in the Stanley Cup Final, where he missed five of seven games. He had 24 goals and 20 assists in 77 regular-season games before adding four goals and four assists in 20 playoff games.
Spector said the results of the surgery will help determine a clearer timeline and how the Oilers approach their salary-cap situation.
According to PuckPedia, Edmonton has $946,000 in cap space as the 2024-25 season nears. That includes Kane’s $5.125-million AAV.
“Either he’s going to be off LTI and just part of your normal team capture or, if he is going to be out for longer than 24 days and 10 games, he can go on long-term injury but you need, as a team, to be able to activate him when he returns from that injury,” Oilers GM Stan Bowman said last month. “So, that’s something that came into a lot of our discussions, was, ‘You may be able to start the season in long-term injury if that’s the case and he’s going to be out at least a month, but we have to have a gameplan for when he’s healthy and ready to play.’”