January 17, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg

TSN’s Darren Dreger reported that the Edmonton Oilers signed John Klingberg on Friday. The 32-year old right-handed defenceman has 412 points in 632 NHL games with the Dallas Stars, Anaheim Ducks, Minnesota Wild, and Toronto Maple Leafs. Let’s not forget that Klingberg went to a Stanley Cup Final with the Stars in the Edmonton COVID bubble in 2020, for what that’s worth.

PuckPedia shared the contract details in this post on X:

https://twitter.com/PuckPedia/status/1880363389618385217

Klingberg had double hip resurfacing surgery late last year. It’s a surgery that involves shaving bone off the joint and placing a metal cap over it. It’s an invasive surgery to say the least.

According to Chris Johnston of the Athletic, Klingberg will be the fifth NHL player to come back after hip resurfacing surgery along with Patrick Kane, Jesse Puljujarvi, Nicklas Backstrom, and Ed Jovanovski.

Kane’s is a tremendous success story. He has 76 points in 89 games for the Detroit Red Wings since joining them part way through last season. Kane is a superstar that has continued to produce at a high level even after this surgery.

Puljujarvi’s story is also a somewhat successful one. He had the surgery done on both hips after the 2022-23 season. He signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins in December of 2023, and he has produced 13 points in 47 games (0.28 points per game) for the Penguins over his two seasons there. He had 16 points in 75 games (0.21 points per game) with the Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes in 2022-23. His point production has increased, but he has had trouble maintaining a regular roster spot despite solid underlying metrics, which is essentially where he was at before his surgery as well.

Backstrom had his surgery done on June 17, 2022. He got 21 points in 39 games for the Washington Capitals in the 2022-23 season. It wasn’t up to his usual elite level of production, but still really good for a then 35-year old coming off of that procedure. He played eight more games the next season, and called it a career.

Jovanovski was one of the first North American professional athletes to have the surgery and return to play. He played 37 games for the Florida Panthers after the surgery. He was 37 years old when he made his comeback.

Ryan Kesler had this surgery as well, but he never played again afterwards. The same can be said for Carl Hagelin (although Hagelin also suffered an eye injury before he could return from the hip surgery).

Tennis star Andy Murray also had this surgery. He’s still playing tennis professionally, but he is nowhere near the same calibre of player today that he was prior to his injury.

It appears that athletes that have this surgery are able to live full and active lives afterwards, but the instances of players returning to their pre-surgery levels of performance are few.

Klingberg has been working hard to get back. He has been working with the same specialist that was working with Kane after his surgery. It’s a fantastic feat for Klingberg to have worked his way back to a point where an NHL team was willing to sign him, but the jury is out on how productive he will be upon his return.

He struggled in the two seasons before this surgery. Klingberg signed a lucrative one-year contract with the Ducks in the summer of 2022. That didn’t work out well for anyone involved. He put up a more than respectable 25 points in 50 games, but his underlying metrics were abhorrent. That should’ve been expected on an atrocious Ducks team though. 

The Ducks traded Klingberg to the Minnesota Wild at the 2023 trade deadline. He got nine points in seventeen games for the Wild. His underlying numbers improved, but they sheltered him. He only played 21.8% of his five-on-five ice time against elite competition with the Wild according to PuckIQ.

The Leafs signed Klingberg last summer, and he only played in fourteen games for them before he had his surgery. He got five points in those fourteen games, but his goal share was only 39.1% (9-14). Klingberg was out there for a goal against per game.

Defending was never the best part of Klingberg’s game, even in his prime. We don’t know how much Klingberg’s hip issues hindered his skating ability and his defensive performance in the last two years.

The Oilers are taking a risk on Klingberg from a hockey perspective. Currently, a combination of Brett Kulak, Troy Stecher, and Josh Brown are rotating in alongside Darnell Nurse on the second pairing. Klingberg will likely be evaluated as a top four option to slot in beside Nurse. There’s certainly a risk in hoping that a 32-year old offensive specialist coming off of double hip resurfacing surgery will be able to defend at a top four level on a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.

The potential benefit is pretty high though. Klingberg is a tremendous puck mover. The Oilers play a fast style that relies on quick puck movement. Also, you might recall that Nurse had his best statistical season in 2022-23 while playing with another fantastic puck moving defenceman with questionable defensive skills (Tyson Barrie). A puck moving defenceman is a nice fit with Nurse. The defenceman passing the puck up the ice is usually not up the ice, so that gives Nurse more chances to get involved in the rush. Nurse also likes to reverse the puck in his own zone a lot, which means that he likes to get it to his defence partner. If that player can’t move the puck out of the zone efficiently, then the Oilers end up spending more time in their own zone.

I feel like Klingberg will start in the Stecher/Brown role where he will get some shifts with Nurse, but will also be relieved by Kulak for spells. There’s no sense in throwing Klingberg into the deep end right away. They will likely work Klingberg in slowly while still evaluating what they have in him.

Klingberg is not what many Oilers fans had in mind when they were thinking of potential trade deadline additions to bolster the top four, especially after Bowman said that his plan was to accrue cap space to be used at the trade deadline. The hope was to add a top four defenceman with term. 

Klingberg shouldn’t be viewed as a viable long-term option at this point. Even if Klingberg has a successful run in Edmonton this season, there isn’t enough of a track record of positive long-term results after hip resurfacing surgery to think that Klingberg is the top four defenceman of the future for the Oilers. He could allow the Oilers to kick the can down the road a little bit though. The market for available top four defenders (especially right-handed ones) is pretty thin right now, and the Oilers don’t have a lot of assets to spend in a big trade.

The Klingberg singing is only a low risk decision if the team has the flexibilty to add another defenceman at the trade deadline if Klingberg doesn’t work out. All signs are pointing to them being able to do that if they choose.

Klingberg’s addition puts the Oilers at 24 players on the active roster, which means that someone will have to be sent down. I assume that player will be Brown. If you recall, the Oilers recalled Noah Philp last week. He’s getting a test drive before the trade deadline to see if the club needs an extrenal upgrade at the fourth line centre position or not.

All of that means that the Oilers are currently using a significant chunk of the LTIR pool available to them because of Evander Kane’s injury. The interesting thing is that Oilers will still be operating in LTIR even if Brown and Philp both get sent down after adding Klingberg.

Also, consider what Frank Seravalli said on Oilers Now on January 10, 2025 after news of Kane’s knee surgery broke:

“It gives the Oilers additional support to make any medical claim that they might need to do on the LTIR if anyone, including the league, were to challenge this. And so moving forward, I would consider the Oilers operating on just one track and one track only, which would mean Kane isn’t coming back until the playoffs.”

Related: Bowman’s “million dollar mistake” involving Kane

Kane’s recovery timeline from his abdominal surgery was originally a minimum of five to six months, as stated by the Oilers. That surgery occurred on September 19, 2024. Five to six months from that date would have put his return between February 19 – March 19, 2025.

Kane said that his knee procedure will only pause his rehabilitation process by one to two weeks. If we add one to two weeks to that date range, that would put his return between Febraury 26 – April 2, 2025. The regular season ends on April 17, 2025.

Kane should only be paused from doing his abdominal surgery rehab for a week or two; but that knee will need time to get back to full strength after that pause, which will likely have some impact on his ability to perform the exercises related to his abdominal surgery rehab. I’m FAR from a medical expert, but I think the knee surgery will add more than just the one to two weeks to Kane’s overall recovery timeline. It’s ENTIRELY possible that Kane’s recovery timeline gets pushed another two weeks down the road to extend past the regular season. My gut tells me that it’s probable.

Remember that Bowman’s plan entering the season was to accrue cap space by not using Kane’s LTIR pool. Well, he just used some of it to sign Klingberg. The Oilers would have to waive Derek Ryan, send him down, and play with a 21-man roster on top of sending Brown and Philp down to be able to accrue any more cap space before the trade deadline. That would only allow them to accrue pennies in cap space between now and the trade deadline. It would really be of no benefit to play with a lean roster to accrue cap space at this point.

I’ve thought that Kane was going to miss the entire regular season all along. Kane’s knee surgery made me even more sure of that. I think that the Klingberg singing makes that outcome all but certain.

If the Oilers are prepared to spend Kane’s LTIR pool, as they just demonstrated that they are, then they could still add another defenceman.

All of this is just adding intrigue to the Oilers’ trade deadline plans. They could opt to address other roster needs rather than getting another defenceman on top of Klingberg, but all signs are pointing to the Oilers being able to spend Kane’s LTIR pool to add at the deadline.