Edmonton Oilers Fire Coach Jay Woodcroft, Bring In Kris Knoblauch
A rocky start to the season in Edmonton just got rockier. The Edmonton Oilers made a massive swing behind the bench on Sunday, relieving head coach Jay Woodcroft of his duties after parts of three seasons with the club. In a corresponding move, the Oilers announced that Kris Knoblauch will take over as the new coach, elevating him from his prior role as coach of the New York Rangers’ AHL affiliate in Hartford. Assistant coach Dave Manson is also out, with Hockey Hall of Famer Paul Coffey taking his place.
The news comes somewhat surprisingly after the Oilers’ 4-1 win over the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night, a victory which seemed to present a positive path forward for the club following their truly disastrous early-season performance.
After 13 games, the Oilers currently sit with a 3-9-1 record that has them second-last in the Pacific Division, ahead of only the league-worst San Jose Sharks, who actually beat the Oilers by a score of 3-2 on Thursday. While the Oilers are indeed struggling, it’s fair to wonder if Woodcroft was the problem. With a team save percentage of .864, the worst metric in the NHL and 10 points lower than the next closest team, the Oilers’ problems seemed to be very squarely focused in net, with the coach only capable of doing so much to help a struggling goaltender. And yet, Woodcroft has now paid the price for the chaos that has clouded the club’s Stanley Cup aspirations. In 133 regular season games behind the Oilers’ bench, Woodroft leaves town with a 79-36-10 record, along with two post-season appearances and one trip to the Western Conference final. If the Oilers don’t right the ship in the coming days, Woodcroft and Manson might not be the only figure headed out the door as a result.
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With the 31st-place Oilers on the verge of flushing their season away by the middle of November, management served up yet another excuse for this group, firing Woodcroft and defensive coach Dave Manson and bringing in Connor McDavid’s junior coach Kris Knoblauch and former Oiler Paul Coffey.
“That’s why I said it’s a difficult decision,” said general manager Ken Holland at Sunday’s hastily-called news conference. “We had the second best winning percentage over the last 120 games with Jay but we’re in win-now mode. The time is now to try and win.
“You can get into the debate of whether 12 or 13 games is enough, but I think if you wait another 10 games and things don’t change it’s probably too late. So Jeff (Jackson, CEO of hockey operations) and I felt it was something that needed to be done.”
This makes 11 different head coaches in the last 16 seasons and the fifth coach in eight years and 13 games for the current leadership group — Todd McLellan (266 games), Ken Hitchcock (62 games), Dave Tippett (161 games) and Woodcroft (133 games).
If there is a more damning indictment on an organization and a dressing room, I can’t think of it.
It also begs the question, how do you not take a long, hard look at the core of this hockey team? With their talent, experience and everything they have to play for this season, if it takes yet another coaching change to get them motivated then is that an area that needs fixing.
“I believe in the core,” said Holland. “Nobody has played more than five playoff rounds the last two years. We’ve gone to the final four, we’ve gone to the final eight, last year we were top five or six in the league in points.
“I just felt we needed to make a change to jump-start our season. I don’t think it’s on the core. The core has done it over the last two years. We didn’t want to wait around any longer.”
As the Oilers languish at the bottom of the league in their all-too-familiar state of upheaval, and in the wake of Sunday’s blood-letting, the one thing almost everyone can agree on is that it’s not coaching.
Woodcroft went 79-41-13 during his brief time here, which was the sixth-best record in the league over that span. He went 26-9-3 and three rounds deep in the playoffs his first season and 50-23-9 and two rounds deep in the second. They were eliminated by the eventual Stanley Cup champions each time.
His tragic flaw, though, is that he didn’t take a hard enough line with a team that has never taken puck management and defensive responsibilities seriously. The team took a massive step back defensively this season, not just in net, and he couldn’t get it fixed.
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