Oilers' Kane details his injuries, slated to have surgery and miss start of NHL season

Edmonton Oilers forward Evander Kane will undergo surgery and will be sidelined into the start of the regular season, general manager Stan Bowman announced Wednesday.

"He's going to be out for a while," Bowman said without revealing the specific nature of the surgery. "I don't want to speculate on that. I think our doctors will be able to give you a better handle on that, but he's not going to be here for a while.

"It's going to be soon. He is not going to be available for training camp and the beginning of the season. I don't want to speak on the medical part. We'll get our doctors to comment on that, but he is going to be having surgery."

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Kane, 33, recorded 44 points (24 goals, 20 assists) in 77 games during the regular season in 2023-24 and eight points (four goals, four assists) in 20 playoff games. He missed the last five games of the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers because of a sports hernia.

Kane told media on Wednesday he's slated to have surgery on abductors on each hip, to repair two torn lower abdominal muscles and to address two hernias. He said he first started noticing "something was wrong in late October" and that it became progressively worse as the season went on.

The forward said "everybody agreed" he needed to take time off after the end of the playoffs "to see if anything settled down, if anything could be rehabbed."

"I know there were some people that believed that we could possibly get better through rehab. That ended up not being the case," Kane said.

"Then you start the due-diligence process, trying to find the best surgeon and surgeons out there to do what they do, and hearing from them. I think, for me, that was very important because this is a big undertaking. For me, it's something that I want to get fixed once, get fixed correctly and continue my playing career."

Bowman said the goal "was to determine the best path forward with his injury."

"Sometimes when players — he can probably speak to this better than me — when players are injured there's often times a couple of different ways you can proceed. You get a diagnosis and sometimes it can be rehab and sometimes it's definite surgery, sometimes surgery is an option, but you might want to try and rehab it before.

"At the end of the day, nobody really wants to have surgery. There's always complications that can come from that. Evander would probably better suited to speak on that."

Kane has totaled 617 points (326 goals, 291 assists) in 930 career games with the Atlanta/Winnipeg franchise, Buffalo Sabres, San Jose Sharks and Oilers. He was selected by the Thrashers with the fourth overall pick of the 2009 NHL Draft.

Field Level Media with files from CTV News Edmonton and TSN