Knowing Ken Hitchcock as I do, I’m confident saying that if he had his way, he’d be back standing behind the bench as the coach of the Edmonton Oilers next season. As we know, that’s not going to happen because after less than a full season with the team he long wanted to coach, he’s…
So, if the first round of the NHL Entry Draft goes exactly the way Bob McKenzie of TSN envisions it, the Edmonton Oilers will be selecting Russian right winger Vasili Podkolzin in Vancouver on Friday with the eighth overall pick.
No NHL general manager is going to give fans a completely unfiltered look at the inner workings of their hockey operations department, but the ease with which new Edmonton Oilers POHO and GM Ken Holland shared a glimpse with season ticket holders on Thursday feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the Peter…
I remember waking up the morning of June 19, 2006 in Raleigh, North Carolina certain the Edmonton Oilers would waltz past the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final to complete a balls-out joyride and claim the most unlikely championship in franchise history.
Being a slow learner, I didn’t feel this way a year ago, but count me among those hoping the Edmonton Oilers will find a way to get out from under Milan Lucic and the four years remaining on his contract. We’re hearing these days that might be possible in a deal with the Vancouver Canucks…
Unless agent Markus Lehto or Jesse Puljujarvi pick up the phone and tell Edmonton Oilers’ POHO and GM Ken Holland in no uncertain terms he won’t play for the Oilers again and he wants out of Edmonton so bad he can taste it, it makes no sense to trade him this off-season.
Just the other day, I wrote about how relationships — who you know – often enter into the hiring process to some degree in the NHL, how that dynamic played into Edmonton Oilers’ POHO and GM Ken Holland hiring Dave Tippett as his head coach and what might happen from here on out. While that…
The hockey world at the NHL level is a relatively small one in which just about everybody knows or has worked or played with or against everybody else somewhere along the way. In many cases, it’s just a matter of degree.
“I’m the rubber stamp. I have the sign-off.” Of everything he said Tuesday, that snippet from Edmonton Oilers’ GM and POHO Ken Holland, in conversation with Bob Stauffer and Reid Wilkins of 630 CHED, about trusting new coaching hire Dave Tippett to select his own coaching staff without interference sticks with me.
Pretty much everybody keeping tabs on the Edmonton Oilers’ coaching situation — from those in the actual know to those just guessing — long ago arrived at the conclusion Dave Tippett will be named the next coach of the Oilers. The only question has been when that’ll be made official.
Like I wrote last week when the Edmonton Oilers announced that Craig MacTavish was leaving the team to take a coaching job in the KHL, I understand why fans applauded the decision and are calling for more changes to an organization that hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1990, when Don Getty was Premier of…
Craig MacTavish has always been a smart guy. So, while today’s announcement he’s signed on to coach in the KHL just a couple of weeks into the tenure of new POHO and GM Ken Holland wasn’t expected in terms of timing, it’s no surprise he read the writing on the wall and left on his…
