Ken Holland said he didn’t know severity of McDavid’s injury upon taking Edmonton Oilers GM job
By Zach Laing
4 years agoAs the public learns more about Connor McDavid’s major knee injury last spring, information surrounding his recovery has begun to trickle out ahead of a documentary released Friday on the injury and recovery.
And now, we’re learning about how the injury was handled within the organization.
The Edmonton Sun’s Terry Jones got an advanced look at the film and in a Thursday column highlighted a number of important quotes from the documentary — two of which that really caught the eye of Oilers fans.
They come from Oilers CEO Bob Nicholson and Oilers GM Ken Holland and uh, they’re not exactly a great look.
Oilers GM Ken Holland: “Talking to Bob Nicholson in the process to become the general manager, we did talk about Connor’s injury, but it didn’t seem to be all that significant. I don’t want to throw Bob under the bus, but I wasn’t made aware of just how seriously he was injured.”Nicholson: “When I talked to Ken, he asked that question. It wasn’t the first question he asked, but he certainly asked it fairly quickly through the process. I gave him information, but I certainly didn’t give him all the information.”
Withholding information from your newly hired GM is never a good look, doubly so when it surrounds the best player in the National Hockey League and the face of your franchise.
While Holland did note that there were conversations surrounding the injury, Nicholson himself admitted he “didn’t give (Holland) all the information.”
The truth of the matter is that we don’t know the extent of what information was shared nor do we know exactly what those conversations looked like. At the end of the day, it does appear that Holland wasn’t given all the information necessary to do his job upon being brought into the organization.
Given how many question marks surrounded McDavid, his injury and his future of playing hockey at the time, it does at the very least provide some context as to why Holland hesitated in going big game hunting the last offseason opting for smaller scratch ticket contracts.
On Twitter: @zjlaing
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