Edmonton Oilers GM Provides Update on Evander Kane's Status

The Edmonton Oilers have dealt with some adversity of late, losing both Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway to the restricted free-agent market, in a scenario that indirectly influencing Evander Kane.

Kane isn't 100% healthy at the moment and moving him to LTIR to free up the necessary cap space was in the cards for GM Stan Bowman, even if it meant Kane would eventually come off LTIR in season and force the Oilers GM to make a trade.

Holloway and Broberg are now Blues, what's next for Kane?

Bowman met with the media recently and provided an update on what to expect this season for the veteran winger:

“I don’t have any say-so in that, nor should I,” Bowman said. “The most important thing for me is to support Evander in making sure that he gets healthy.”

“When there’s any injury, there’s a couple options that come into play: You get treatment for it, you do rehab, and over time that injury heals and the player is able to return to play. Sometimes, you have injuries where surgery is required right away, where it’s obvious that’s the only solution, and then you have another type of injury where it’s not as black and white — there’s a few different ways that a player can move forward with it, and that’s his decision, and we’re going to be supportive of Evander in that,” explained Bowman. “So, I think that third scenario is where things are right now.”

“We don’t have that information,” Bowman said. “I don’t weight in on that, and that’s something that he’s going to sort through with the doctors.”

“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,” said Bowman. “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.’”

After letting Broberg and Holloway go, the Oilers are now under the salary cap and will accrue cap space throughout the season. They should be in great shape to add at least a $4 million player come the trade deadline in the spring.

As the roster is set up now, the Kane injury isn't going to influence Bowman's decision making, one way or another.

“The way we’re situated right now, we’re going to be able to start the season with Evander Kane not being on any type of injury — he’ll just be like everyone else, and if he’s able to play right away, that’s great,” he said. “If he’s not, then we’re not going to have a problem making room for him when he’s healthy.”