Oilers being urged to reunite with former agitator Evander Kane

The problem with a bargain deal has nothing to do with the bargain.

The Edmonton Journal columnist floated the reunion after the Edmonton Oilers missed on Boston Bruins defenceman Nikita Zadorov, who blocked the trade with his no-movement clause.

Staples argued Edmonton lacks a playoff deterrent, and that Kane still fills that role.

Kane, 34, posted 13 goals and 18 assists in 71 games with the Vancouver Canucks last season and remains unsigned.

Every version of this story frames the money as the obstacle. The money was never the obstacle.

PuckPedia lists the Oilers with roughly $4.7 million in projected cap space and 23 players already on the active roster.

A veteran on a minimum deal clears the cap easily. He does not clear the roster without displacing somebody already standing there.

That somebody is almost certainly Isaac Howard. Edmonton sent Sam O'Reilly to the Tampa Bay Lightning to acquire the Hobey Baker winner, and this is the summer he was supposed to seize middle-six minutes.

General manager Stan Bowman also shipped Darnell Nurse's full $9.25 million cap hit to the San Jose Sharks on July 1, buying flexibility for the young group rather than for another 35-year-old winger.

Kane turns 35 on August 2 and has gone unsigned through three-plus weeks of free agency.

The Athletic's Dom Luszczyszyn pegged his projected defensive impact among the weakest in the class and doubted whether $3.5 million would be reasonable value.

Thirty-two teams have looked at that math and passed. The silence is not about Edmonton's cap sheet, it is a league-wide verdict on what the intimidation role is worth now.

New head coach Mike Babcock inherits the call.

Signing Kane would mean overruling both the open market and the development plan Edmonton spent the entire offseason constructing.

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