EDMONTON -- Evander Kane will miss the start of this season for the Edmonton Oilers and undergo surgery on several injuries the forward sustained last season.
Kane said Wednesday he will have procedures to repair two torn hip adductor muscles, two hernias and two torn lower abdominal muscles, all of which stemmed from the 33-year-old playing through a sports hernia last season.
"I felt something was wrong in late October, I noticed something, and it just kind of slowly got worse over time," he said. "Probably in December or January it was getting much worse. But at the same time, the thing with this injury is that some days you feel better than others. Obviously in the [Stanley Cup] Playoffs, by the time we got around to that, it wasn’t any better, it was getting severely worse. At the same time you’re trying to do anything you can because you want to give yourself and your teammates the best opportunity to win. That's what I was trying to do."
There is no timetable for Kane's recovery.
"He's going to be out for a while," Oilers general manager Stan Bowman said. "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."
Kane had 44 points (24 goals, 20 assists) in 77 regular-season games and eight points (four goals, four assists) in 20 playoff games last season.
Edmonton reached Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, a 2-1 loss to the Florida Panthers. Kane missed the final five games of the best-of-7 series because of his injuries.
At the conclusion of last season, Kane said he took time to assess his injuries and decide on the best course of action going forward. He said the decision to have surgery came after consulting a number of doctors and players who had dealt with similar issues.
"I think everybody agreed we wanted to see how things looked after we took some time off to see if anything settled down and if anything could be rehabbed," he said. "I know there were some people that believed we could possibly get better through rehab and that ended up not being the case, and then you start your due diligence process in trying to find the best surgeons out there to do what they do and hearing from them.
"For me, that was very important because it was a big undertaking and injury and for me something that I want to get fixed once, fixed correctly, and continue my playing career."
Kane is entering the third season of a four-year, $20.5 million contract ($5.125 million average annual value) with Edmonton.
Bowman said the Oilers will not put Kane on long-term injured reserve unless required later in the season. Edmonton added forward depth by signing forwards Viktor Arvidsson (two years, $4 million AAV) and Jeff Skinner (one year, $3 million) as unrestricted free agents July 1.
"We have the salary cap room, he'll be on the regular roster," Bowman said of Kane. "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 is so that we would not be required to start the season with long-term injury and that hasn't changed."
Besides the additions of Arvidsson and Skinner, the Oilers opted not to match offer sheets for defenseman Philip Broberg and forward Dylan Holloway signed with the St. Louis Blues, which freed up space under the NHL salary cap.
Selected by the Atlanta Thrashers with the No. 4 pick in the 2009 NHL Draft, Kane has 617 points (326 goals, 291 assists) in 930 regular-season games with the Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets, Buffalo Sabres, San Jose Sharks and Oilers, and 43 points (26 goals, 17 assists) in 76 playoff games.
"I talked to other guys that went to other doctors for the same injury," Kane said. "In talking to all those types of different people you learn about how you can fix these types of things and the different procedures.
"For me, it was something that took a little bit of time to digest, and I'm supposed to be talking to the best of the best and they all have three different opinions, it can be all confusing when you're not a surgeon yourself. It definitely helped talking to a couple of guys around the League, Sean Monahan being one of them, and he was real insightful and gave me some good feedback from his experience."
