It has been over 14 months since defenceman John Klingberg last played in the NHL. The 32-year-old blue liner has been out for over a year due to a hip resurfacing surgery, which is no small matter for hockey players his age. There had been rumblings that he was looking to make a return sometime in the 2024-25 season, and he is going to the Edmonton Oilers as they gear up for another deep playoff push:

Let's break this down.

First and foremost, this is not a standard surgery for hockey players. Sean Gentille of The Athletic wrote about this in late 2023 when Patrick Kane was returning. Ed Jovanovski had the procedure done in April of 2013, returned in January of 2014, played 37 regular season games, and that was the end of his career. Washington forward Nicklas Backstrom had his done in 2022, returned in January of 2023, and played 47 more games before (seemingly) ending his NHL run.

The best-case scenario is what we're seeing with Kane right now, who is not the player he was 5-6 years ago, but is still an effective offensive player for Detroit.

While the procedure has presumably improved player chances since Jovanovski's days, the Backstrom and Kane results give us the two end of the spectrums: The player returns, tries to gut it out, but is not effective, or the player returns and sees a modestly reduced role but is still contributing.

Working in Klingberg's favour is that after Evan Bouchard, the right-hand shooting defencemen in Edmonton isn't very deep: Ty Emberson, Troy Stecher, Alec Regula, Josh Brown. Emberson seems like he's earned a regular role, but the rest are by no means lineup locks. If Klingberg can help the team, he'll see third-pair minutes.

The issue for fantasy is that Klingberg will not get close to the top power-play unit and he's very unlikely to be any higher than fifth on the depth chart for even-strength ice time behind Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse, and Brett Kulak. Even if Klingberg is an effective player – and that is a big 'if' – then he's looking at secondary power-play time and about 14 minutes a game on the low end, maybe up to 17 minutes if things go very well. It just isn’t much meaningful ice time for fantasy relevance, no matter the talent of the forwards up front.

Also, from 2019-2022, when he was presumably healthy and still on the right side of 30-years-old, he was averaging roughly two shots per game, a little over a block per game, and about 0.75 hits per game. And that was with 22:20 in ice time per appearances. He wasn't a big peripheral guy anyway, and he certainly won't be with 5-6 minutes less each outing.

If an injury comes to Bouchard, or a couple of their top guys are injured, maybe Klingberg has some streaming value eventually. There is a lot that has to go right for him, though, and a lot has to go wrong for others. If things do go well for him, and he can be an impactful puck-moving depth defenceman, it likely helps the forwards create more offensively rather than boosting his own fantasy value. There just isn't much here outside the deepest of fantasy formats.