People's fascination with this is so befuddling to me. Like they are enamored with 2018 Patrick Kane "but at 65%". That is not what we are talking about. Like at all. This surgery is a flat out career ender. It has ended half a dozen very significant careers and every time someone has it done it's always "I'm in great shape and I'm coming back from this" until they are signed and totally crap the bed.
"Just throw him on the 2nd Line and let him generate all that sweet offense!" and "He's worth a flyer on the 2nd PP! Gotta be better than <insert player who you hate>".
No... just not... Like I said multiple times in this thread, he will be lucky to walk semi-normally after this surgery let alone skate in the NHL. I would tell you to watch Backstrom and his total and complete inability to pivot and turn on his hip and he makes the biggest, slowest, loop ever to get back into a play that passed him 6 seconds ago, but he's already retired himself just 8 games into the season.
My issue with this is even overlooking his age, cost, term, obvious decline the last three seasons, personality, etc. - I do not trust at all that he will recover to the point where he will even be semi-passible on the ice and he's going to straight up eat a dozen games of choice offensive minutes that should be going to someone who actually has working appendages, the ability to positively affect our team, and a future.
I would rather give these minutes to Zadina if we could reverse-trebuchet him back to the Wings over Kane because at least I would get a guy who could skate and I know wasn't a near 99% chance to fail (okay, he's probably still 95%). Those are valuable minutes to give to a team that's looking to grow and tossing them to a literal 1-legged, 35 year old player because he doesn't want to give up yet is absolute bonkers.
Move on from this idea.