It’s possible that the Edmonton Oilers have made an exceptional decision by hiring Kris Knoblauch as their new head coach, but it seems more likely that they either bent over backwards to appease Connor McDavid or let him play GM.
Knoblauch may well succeed in Edmonton, but looking at his resume from a 30,000-foot perspective it’s tough to see an obvious NHL head-coaching candidate.
Knoblauch has a strong resume at the CHL level, but he has yet to make a strong impact coaching men.
Since his last season in the OHL (2016-17), the coach spent two years as an assistant with the Philadelphia Flyers — where he led the NHL’s 17th-ranked power play — and four years as the head coach of the AHL’s Hartford Wolfpack.
During that time the Wolfpack went 112-87-31, good for a winning percentage of .487, and made the playoffs just once.
None of this proves that Knoblauch is a bad coach. The man has won WHL and OHL titles, after all. But he’s not someone who would’ve been on the radar of too many NHL teams other than the Oilers. That makes it clear that the fact he coached McDavid with the Erie Otters was a critical factor in his hiring.
Having an existing relationship with the Oilers’ most important player is a positive, but it’s unclear whether it’s enough of one to have Knoblauch leapfrog other potential candidates with a track record of significant NHL success — either as head coaches or assistants.
This hiring invited questions about how much of a say the Oilers players, but particularly McDavid, had in this decision. That question was answered in a way that didn’t inspire confidence as president and GM Ken Holland alluded to talking to his veteran players while CEO Jeff Jackson was quick to say the players weren’t consulted on the decision at all.
Ken Holland & Jeff Jackson when asked if they consulted the players about the coaching decision.#Oilers pic.twitter.com/mSdAUfkPAz
— Woz (@itsWozzz) November 12, 2023
The mixed message leaves room for two interpretations — neither of which reflect particularly well on the Oilers.
- It’s possible the Oilers did talk to McDavid and their veteran players about the coaching situation and that played a role in Woodcroft’s firing and the installation of Knoblauch behind the bench. However, Jackson doesn’t want to seem like the players have an undue amount of power within the organization, so he’s denying that.
- The Oilers truly didn’t really involve their players in this choice, but independently came to the conclusion that their best course of action was to get a guy with a relatively thin recent resume because they put a massive premium on keeping McDavid happy.
The first scenario implies that McDavid and the veterans were exerting a level of control we don’t often see from NHL players and Oilers management is concerned about or ashamed of that. The second suggests that McDavid has so much power in the building that he doesn’t need to say anything for the team to make major decisions that prioritize accommodating him above all else.
McDavid is good enough that everything the Oilers do should have him in mind to some degree, but the latest hiring speaks to a power dynamic that might not be healthy. Either he is pulling the strings, or the fear of him becoming unsatisfied and possibly leaving following the 2025-26 season is strong enough that he doesn’t have to.
Another wrinkle in this situation that makes Edmonton’s decision-making look suspect is the addition of Paul Coffey behind the bench as an assistant to Knoblauch.
Coffey is a franchise legend, but the top item on his coaching resume is a part of one season with the OJHL Pickering Panthers — a team he co-owns— back in 2014-15. The team won 37.0% of its games that season, and the most notable moment from Coffey’s coaching career is likely the Hall of Fame defenceman getting suspended for using a “discriminatory slur” while behind the bench for a AAA midget game.
Although Coffey may have something to offer at the NHL level, he’s not the type of steady hand and proven commodity you’d hope to pair with a new head coach low on experience steering teams at the highest level of the sport.
To be fair, any criticism that can be levied at the Oilers right now is about their process. We don’t know the results of their coaching moves yet.
Considering Edmonton has the best 5v5 expected goal rate in the NHL (57.82%), all the components of a power play that made history last season and a team save percentage (.864) that’s bound to improve, it’s exceedingly likely that this team bounces back this year.
Whether the magnitude of that positive regression will be enough to save their season remains to be seen, but Knoblauch is in an excellent position to look like a force for good, no matter how much credit he deserves.
That means that in a few months, there’s a solid chance the Oilers will look like they made the right move, even if they probably would’ve improved under Woodcroft had they kept him. Before they get any plaudits for that, it’s worth taking note of the dubious way they’ve gone about their business — and the power McDavid seems to have gained within the organization, whether it’s something he’s wielding overtly or not.
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The Canadian Press
NHL will have a new Stanley Cup champion this century as lengthy droughts take center stage
The Canadian Press·4 min readNo matter which team wins the Stanley Cup championship this year it will be a first this century.
The Dallas Stars won the franchise’s lone championship in 1999, months before the world worried computers would malfunction at the start of a new millennium. The New York Rangers haven’t done it since their magical run in 1994 that ended a 54-year title drought.
The Edmonton Oilers have not done it since the last title of their dynasty in 1990, seven years before current star Connor McDavid was born. The Florida Panthers have never won the Cup since their inception in 1993, when hockey in the U.S. Sun Belt was just starting to become a reality.
“It’s something that these all markets are starving for,” said Mike Rupp, a NHL Network analyst whose three-point Game 7 performance in 2003 gave New Jersey its third championship. “I love seeing new blood in it.”
New blood when it comes to a title but not unfamiliar with this stage of the playoffs. Florida and Dallas were each in their respective conference finals last year (Florida advanced to the Final, too), while New York and Edmonton are back after getting there in 2022.
Thirteen different teams have hoisted the Cup since 1999, including Chicago, Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay doing it three times, and New Jersey, Colorado and Los Angeles twice each.
The more things change …
None of the remaining teams has had the same coach for more than the past two seasons.
Paul Maurice took over the Panthers and Peter DeBoer the Stars in the summer of 2022. Peter Laviolette got the Rangers’ job less than a year ago. Kris Knoblauch was an early-season replacement for the Oilers in November.
Part of that is just the cyclical nature of coaching changes in hockey, though the high volume over the past 18 months has gotten the attention of the fraternity, with DeBoer calling it “insanity.”
There’s still value in experience, though, with Knoblauch the only first-time NHL head coach in the final four. He is eight wins away from being the fourth coach hired in-season to win the Cup that year.
Laviolette is in his sixth head coaching job. He coached Carolina to the Stanley Cup championship in 2006 and took Philadelphia in 2010 and Nashville in 2017 to the final. DeBoer has two trips to the final on his resume: 2012 with New Jersey and 2016 with San Jose. No one has coached more NHL regular-season and playoff games without winning the Cup than Maurice with 1,973.
… the more they stay the same
This isn’t quite like the Tampa Bay Lightning going back to back in 2020 and ‘21 and reaching the final in ’22, but these teams have all played a lot of playoff hockey in recent years.
Counting their bubble run to the Cup Final four years ago, the Stars have been in 79 playoff games dating to 2019.
“Dallas has been a good team for a long time, just never able to kind of get over the hump and had some really tough paths in the playoffs,” Rupp said.
McDavid and the Oilers have played 54 postseason games since 2020, their first of five consecutive postseason appearances, with an asterisk on the expanded pandemic format.
The Panthers, who have played 52 over the past five playoffs, have usurped the Lightning as the best team in Florida, including knocking their cross-state rivals out in the first round this year. They’re now co-Cup favorites along with Dallas, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.
The Rangers, with 40 games of playoff experience since 2020, are actually the longest shot on the board despite winning the Presidents’ Trophy as the NHL’s best team in the regular season. Since general manager Chris Drury took over, New York has gone from youth movement to powerhouse.
“The days of the rebuild of the Rangers, it wasn’t all that long ago,” Rupp said. “They were setting themselves up for some very lean years, and they turned it around a lot quicker, I think, than people thought.”
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