Report: Ex-Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli interviews for Pittsburgh Penguins vacant GM role

Peter Chiarelli could be back in an NHL GM chair sooner rather than later.

It’s been five years since Chiarelli was fired from his role as general manager with the Edmonton Oilers, but it didn’t take him long to land back on his feet again working with the St. Louis Blues. Hired in 2019-20 as a senior advisor, he slid up the ranks in 2021-22 where for the last two seasons he’s served as their vice-president of hockey operations.

Teams have kept an eye on Chiarelli over the years. Last year, he interviewed for what was the then-vacant general manager role with the Chicago Blackhawks.

And now, according to TSN’s Pierre LeBrun, Chiarelli is among a dozen-odd candidates involved in the first round of interviews with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Chiarelli helped take the Boston Bruins from a team outside the playoffs when he was hired in 2006-07 to a Stanley Cup title in 2011, but never found the same success in Edmonton. In fact, for a large part, his tenure in Edmonton was a disaster.

He arrived after the club drafted Connor McDavid in 2015 and was supposed to be able to build the team into a Stanley Cup champion. Instead, the Oilers missed the playoffs in three out of four seasons and continuously undervalued his own assets in trades.

The only good thing you could argue Chiarelli did for the franchise was draft well. Between the 2015-2018 draft, he drafted a number of players who are either in the NHL, or tracking to play NHL games.

Those players include: Connor McDavid, Caleb Jones, Ethan Bear, John Marino, Jesse Puljujarvi, Markus Niemelainen, Vincent Desharnais, Kailer Yamamoto, Stuart Skinner, Phillip Kemp, Evan Bouchard, Ryan McLeod, Olivier Rodrigue and Michael Kesselring.

In March 2020, 14 months after being fired, Chiarelli opened up about his tenure with the Oilers, but it’s safe to say he never realized what had went wrong in Edmonton.

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@thenationnetwork.com.