OVER TO YOU, STEVE

How many coaches does Edmonton Oilers GM Steve Tambellini get to send down the road before he takes the fall and joins them on the unemployment line? I’d hope Tambellini reached his limit with today’s announcement Tom Renney won’t be back.

Having pulled the trigger on a good man and a good coach in Renney, the next bullet in the Oilers organizational gun has to have Tambellini’s name on it — a lot of fans would add the name of president of hockey operations Kevin Lowe — if the rebuild doesn’t move forward into the new phase the GM talked about at his availability at Rexall Place today.

It’s time for some buck-stops-here mentality and that means that Tambellini, who has a new contract in his pocket from owner Daryl Katz, had better get it right with his next coaching hire. I believe that hire, all circumstances taken into account, will be Brent Sutter.

That won’t play out, we’re led to believe by Tambellini, immediately. He’d only say today he wants to have somebody in place before the NHL Entry Draft, which is June 22. Every instinct I have tells me we’ll have a new man in the hot seat before June 1 and that Sutter is the leading candidate.

I don’t know for sure if that’s the right move, but it better be because the next guy out the door if the rebuild goes sideways absolutely has to be the guy who delivered the bad news to a good man today.

Over to you, Steve.