BLOG: Kane to have surgery, miss start of season

EDMONTON, AB – General Manager and Executive VP of Hockey Operations Stan Bowman announced Wednesday morning Oilers forward Evander Kane will have surgery this week and start the season on injured reserve.

"Evander is going to have to have surgery," Bowman said during his media availability on the opening day of training camp. "He is going to not be available for training camp and the beginning of the season."

Kane has been "dealing with an issue with his hip" for a while, Oilers CEO of Hockey Jeff Jackson said on July 1 during his free agency media availability. Bowman said Wednesday Kane and the team have been weighing their options this summer, with the 33-year-old veteran ultimately deciding on surgery.

"The goal there was to determine the best path forward with his injury," Bowman said. "When players are injured, there's oftentimes a couple different ways that you can proceed with. You get a diagnosis and sometimes it can be rehab. Sometimes it's definite surgery, sometimes surgery is an option, but you might want to try to rehab it before because I think at the end of the day, nobody really wants to have surgery. There's always complications that can come from that.

"The way we always handle it with our players is that, at the end of the day, it's their body, it's their decision to make. They can listen to the recommendations of doctors, but they have to get to the point to where, in their mind, this is definitely what they want to do. And it was recently where we reached that point with Evander."

Kane spoke after Bowman on Wednesday and elaborated on the extent of his nagging ailments.

"I'm having a lot done," he said. "Both adductors on each hip, two torn lower abdominal muscles and two hernias."

Kane also provided his perspective on the process he went through this summer that ultimately led to the decision to pursue surgery.

"After going to the last possible day of the NHL season and trying to figure out how I was going proceed in the offseason, I think everybody agreed we wanted to see how things looked after," he said. "We took some time off to see if anything settled down, if anything could be rehabbed. There were some people that believed that we could possibly get better through rehab, but that ended up not being the case.

"And then you kind of start the due diligence process and trying to find the best surgeon and surgeons out there to do what they do and hearing from them. For me that was very important because this is a big undertaking and injury and for me, something that I want to get fixed once, get fixed correctly and continue my playing career. There was some confusion throughout the offseason in terms of how we were going to fix some of these injuries. And different doctors obviously had different opinions and just continuing to do my due diligence and asking questions and also talking to many other players around the league that have had maybe not the exact same injury, but similar injuries or have also had work done by those surgeons.

"There was a process that needed to take place to make sure that I was doing the right thing and that I felt comfortable. So we've gotten there and I'm looking forward to getting back healthy."

Kane mentioned one fellow player he spoke with was Columbus forward Sean Monahan, who underwent hip surgery in 2022 and groin surgery in 2023 before putting up a resurgent 59-point season split between Montreal and Winnipeg last year.

"I'm excited to get this fixed and get healthy," said Kane, who scored 24 goals and 20 assists in 77 regular season games last year before putting up four goals and four assists in 20 playoff appearances. "I'm really looking forward to feeling 100% for the first time in a while, whenever that day is, and getting back on the ice and doing what I know I can do."

While Kane is unavailable, Bowman said the team will not place him on long-term injured reserve.

"We don't need to use long-term injury right now," he said. "We have the salary cap room. He'll be on the regular roster as we get into the season. If we run into a number of injuries that are shorter term in nature and we need to bring bodies up, then we have the flexibility to put him on long-term injury. But part of the reason we made the moves we did over the summer was so that we would not be required to start the season with long-term injury and that hasn't changed."