Evander Kane has unquestionably covered the bet the Oilers took on him and then some. In the regular season he cracked the 20 goal mark in a mere 43 games, then in the playoffs proceeded to lead the Oilers in goals scored with 13 in a mere 15 games played.
He was a hit from start to finish, and none of the funny business that dogged him outside of the rink in San Jose, Buffalo, or Winnipeg.
He fit like a glove on the team this year, the only question remains how do we bring him back?
I’m going to explore a potential answer to that question in a two part blog.
For this one I’m going to focus on what Kane’s contract will look like. In the next blog I’ll focus more on how the Oilers can clear cap space to re-sign Kane.
Now granted, the Oilers don’t have a lot of cap space to work with so there’s undoubtedly other teams that could pay Kane more.
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However, Kane will no doubt ask himself if he wants to languish on a bad/rebuilding team like New Jersey or Ottawa while making a huge pay cheque, or would he rather make a little less and maybe win a Stanley or two.
I believe the Oilers can offer him a great chance for the latter – to win now, while still coming up with a contract that, while perhaps not as lucrative as elsewhere, can still satisfy his needs.
The Oilers, in fact, have a GM who was a pioneer in creative ways to sign players to decrease their cap hit while still paying them a good chunk of money.
Here’s a contract that could balance that for Kane in my unofficial role as armchair GM of the Oilers:
$23.5312 million over 5 years + $1 million signing bonus ($200K per season)
Year 1 – $7 million
Year 2 – $5.6 million
Year 3 – $4.48 million
Year 4 – $3.584 million
Year 5 – $2.8672 million
Cap hit – $4.90624 million per season
This would bring Kane’s payday to just a shade over $24 million over five years which is a pretty good chunk of change, while at the same time giving Kane some guaranteed money no matter what happens at a cap hit that the Oilers could actually afford. They’d still have to do some wheeling and dealing to move some contracts out, of course, in a salary dump, but this is a cap hit the Oilers could live with while at the same time allowing them to retain a key player from the latter half of the season.
Other teams could pay him more, but only the Oilers can offer him a team he’s now familiar with playing with the two best players in the NHL. And, in fact, Kane has publicly expressed a fondness for playing for the Oilers.
Maybe it could get it done, maybe not, but this is just one idea for how to retain Kane. As always, I’m sure there’ll be some troll who didn’t actually read the blog who will comment on it, or someone who is ready to tell me how wrong I am, but let’s see what happens in the comments section. 🙂
Come back tomorrow for part 2.