What Would You Do Wednesday: Replacing Kane

In this installment of What Would You Do Wednesday, we consider how to replace Evander Kane in the lineup for the 2 weeks to infinity that he’s missing. The point of this feature is just to yell at each other in the comments (this is the internet, after all). So I’ll give you the scenario, you explain how to solve it.

Evander Kane was felled just a few minutes into game one with an undisclosed knee injury, and Paul Maurice was happy with a week-to-week diagnosis. He’s to be re-evaluated toward the end of next week with a mysterious “we’ll see” hanging over that exam. 

We looked at the value of Kane here – he’s the only Jets player from this iteration to score 30 goals in a season. Despite injury and lockout shortened seasons, he’s scored at a 57 points per 82 game pace since donning the Polar Night Blues and has the third best even strength scoring rate on the team despite playing over 100 EV minutes with 13 different forwards (many of them very bad) over the past three seasons.  

A somewhat sparse schedule to start October means that if a two-week diagnosis is correct, Kane will miss just three more contests (making effectively 6 total). If he takes a month, he would miss another 12 games (15 total), or 18% of the regular season. The Jets can’t afford to simply forfeit those contests and our sources say the league is no open to re-scheduling for when Evander is healthy (sticklers…). 

Matt Halishcuk drew in for game 2, Anthony Peluso for game 3. Patrice Cormier was just waived after returning from injury. The farm is brimming with young talent and the NHL roster has some bodies lying around. If you were in control, how would you replace Kane while he recuperates?

This couldn’t be more simple. Just tell us and your fellow readers how to keep the team rolling without one of its leading scorers. If there is a move, remember to give some specifics. Call up? Okay, who goes down? Trade? Then what’s the return? You tell us in What Would You Do Wednesday!