Edmonton Oilers forward Evander Kane should not have played through a sports hernia all season.
Edmonton Oilers forward Evander Kane should not have played through a sports hernia all season.
EDMONTON -- Tonight is the night Edmonton Oilers fans have been waiting for.
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It's a night that seemed like a distant thought back in mid November - when Jay Woodcroft's 3-9-1 start resulted in his firing and the Oilers bringing in Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey. Since the coaching change the Oilers were the team with the most points in the entire NHL.
The start the team had certainly made a lot of things go off the rails. Philip Broberg was expected to be playing with the NHL team all season alongside a veteran that could help him acclimatize. But it appears that some players also battled through injuries in order to help the team get out of the hole they dug for themselves to kick off the season.
Yesterday Evander Kane revealed to the media about his injury - that he played with all season. He went into a bit of detail regarding a sports hernia he had "all year."
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This brings up a few questions - chief among them being could the Oilers have handled his injury differently?
The simple answer is yes.
A sports hernia is a core injury that affects your skating, quickness and agility. When that happens to a player (who already isn't the best skater) that should be an injury that is addressed properly.
Sports hernia's are typically a strain or tear in soft tissue - which seems like an injury that should not be something that players "manage" themselves or play through.
Back in 2019 Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins suffered from a sports hernia. On November 14, 2019 the team had announced that the expected recovery time from surgery would be six weeks. Because Crosby isn't human he returned to play on January 14th - recording four points against the Minnesota Wild.
It seems like there was two other options the team could have explored. 1) take Kane out of the lineup and have surgery to rectify the sports hernia. 2) take Kane out of the lineup so he could focus on physio and rehabbing his sports hernia.
Either way, he should not have been playing the entire season.
The fact that he wasn't shut down at any point in the season to have that surgery is something that the player, coaching staff and management should take ownership about. It comes across as irresponsible to allow any player to play through that kind of injury.
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