The Edmonton Oilers may be in a predicament. Left-winger Evander Kane, after receiving surgery to repair multiple injuries stemming from a sports hernia in 2022–23, as well as undergoing a follow-up procedure on his knee earlier this calendar year, may be returning to play sooner than anticipated.
This would be welcome news under typical circumstances, but Kane is currently on long-term injured reserve (LTIR), and his contract has provided Edmonton with valuable financial flexibility that they’ve exercised at points throughout the year. A potential return before the playoffs raises questions about how the Oilers should approach their trade deadline.
Let’s break down the options.
The Optimist: Evander Kane remains out for the remainder of the 2024–25 regular season
From an organizational point of view, Kane remaining on LTIR until the playoffs would be the best-case scenario: his cap hit would not hinder the Oilers’ ability to spend above the cap and improve their team. Assuming no other moves, Edmonton could invest up to $4.3M to upgrade deficiencies on their roster.
However, since they would be operating in LTIR, any additions to the team’s cap would not be prorated. In other words, acquiring a player with an annual average value (AAV) of $4M would still count as a $4M cap charge on the Oilers’ payroll, despite the season being partway complete.
The Oilers could also send a player down (e.g. Savoie, who is waiver-exempt) before their next game, moving them out of LTIR and back to accruing cap space. By Friday’s deadline, the team would have banked about $170K over the season, which they could first use on a prorated contract before dipping back into Kane’s LTIR. While this isn’t a major amount, it could in theory allow them to add close to a league-minimum cap hit before leveraging LTIR space. With retention, this could translate to acquiring a ~$1.4M AAV contract at 50% or a ~$2.8M AAV contract at 75%, before any LTIR additions.
The Pessimist: Evander Kane pushes to return before the playoffs begin
If Kane plays a regular season game as an Oiler this year, it will not be because the team rushed him back. Recent buzz from Elliotte Friedman on 32 Thoughts has suggested that Evander may be pushing for an earlier return so that he can showcase his impact heading into the postseason. A self-motivated decision no doubt, but one that would also have significant implications for the Oilers’ plans this week.
“With Kane, I think it’s important for him to play. I think he wants to come back in the regular season, and he wants to prove that he can be a factor on a good team…I don’t know what the medicals say [but] I know there’s a disagreement [between him and the Oilers]… Everything he’s been through, his body’s been through, I just don’t know that the Oilers feel that that makes sense. I just don’t know. So at the very least, the Oilers are doing their due diligence. They got his list, and they’re definitely calling around to ask the teams that he can be traded to, is there interest? And, you know, Kane has another year at just over a $5 million cap hit.”
Assuming that Kane insists on playing before the season is up, the most agreeable solution would be to first send him on a short stint to the American Hockey League (AHL). Per the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA), players on LTIR can request a conditioning loan, which allows them to play in the AHL for a maximum of six days or three games (whichever is shorter) while not counting against their team’s cap.
However, Kane would need to consent to this arrangement, and given past comments he has made when relegated to the bottom-six, it wouldn’t be hard to see him refusing the offer. Doing so would raise serious questions about whether Evander is willing to put the team’s needs above his own self-interests.
From an on-ice perspective, a healthy Kane is a tantalizing asset—he can score, play with an edge, fight, and bring a certain level of swagger that has been sorely lacking on this team. However, like many power forwards in the game, his play has been on a decline since turning 30. The table below shows his impact at five-on-five since joining the Oilers (per NST):
| Season | GP | G | A | P | On-ice GF% | On-ice xG% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021–22 (Regular) | 43 | 12 | 13 | 25 | 63.93 | 52.14 |
| 2021–22 (Playoffs) | 15 | 10 | 3 | 13 | 55.88 | 58.92 |
| 2022–23 (Regular) | 41 | 14 | 7 | 21 | 44.83 | 48.14 |
| 2022–23 (Playoffs) | 12 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 38.89 | 50.26 |
| 2023–24 (Regular) | 77 | 15 | 15 | 30 | 49.44 | 52.73 |
| 2023–24 (Playoffs) | 20 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 42.31 | 47.18 |
While some of his dropoff can be attributed to injury, there are no guarantees that Kane will return to peak 2021–22 playoff form. In fact, his shooting percentage during that run (11%) was well above his career average (7%), making it unlikely we will see a similar level of impact from this player even if he could get back to full speed in short order.
Kane can still help this team in the right circumstances, but to risk a potential cap crunch based on the belief that he will return to form with the team is unwise. Not only would Edmonton be once again forced into a money-in, money-out situation (a familiar predicament to years past), but it would also mean waiving at least one player—likely Kasperi Kapanen or Troy Stecher—to clear the necessary cap space for Kane’s midseason activation. For a team that already sacrificed young pieces in Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg to maintain cap flexibility during the season, this would truly be the worst-case scenario.
Exploring an Evander Kane trade
As of March 1, Kane’s full no-move clause became a 16-team no-trade clause, and as mentioned above, the Oilers have already started gauging teams to see whether there is interest.
Trading Evander Kane with no money coming back would open up approximately $1.2M in projected pro-rated cap space, allowing the team to fit around $5.5M in AAV by the deadline. When factoring in the possibility of acquiring players on retained contracts, this would give the Oilers a tremendous amount of flexibility to address their weaknesses and bolster their lineup for the playoffs.
Another important caveat is that Edmonton wouldn’t necessarily need to move Kane before the deadline. Players can still be traded after March 7 at 3:00 p.m. ET; they would just be ineligible to play regular season or playoff games for their new team that year. If Kane were to be traded to a non-contending team, his availability for the remainder of 2024–25 would likely not be a major concern. Meanwhile, the Oilers would still be able to make some moves of their own before the clock strikes zero on Friday.
Arriving at the crossroads
Although the National Hockey League may pretend that teams don’t strategically use LTIR to circumvent the cap, the reality is that most organizations will do whatever it takes to win. Unfortunately, in the one year that Edmonton can finally use the LTIR loophole to their benefit, they are dealing with one of the league’s biggest wild cards.
Will Evander Kane prioritize team success and wait until the playoffs to return? Or will he put his own interests first, forcing Edmonton’s hand? If there is even a sliver of doubt, Stan Bowman and Jeff Jackson know what they need to do.
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