With the Oilers looking like they’re about to miss the playoffs after steamrolling their way into the dance only a season ago, the knives are starting to come out for coaches and management. In this week’s What Would You Do Wednesday, I want to get your thoughts on who’s to blame here, and ask what you would do to solve the problem?

It goes without saying that this season is going way worse than even the most cynical fan would have predicted. The Oilers came into this season with high expectations and Stanley Cup dreams but rather than living up to them, they’ve found every opportunity available to shoot themselves in the foot. Considering the fact that you can’t #TradeTheMall with every single player on the team the next logical move would be to look at coaching and management. Are Todd McLellan and Peter Chiarelli living life in the hot seat? That’s what I’m asking you to decide.

When you move into a new house and the walls cave in do you blame the furniture or do you look at the guy that built the thing in the first place? Personally, I’ve seen the coaching carousel turn more than a few times around these parts without changing much of anything, so I tend to look a little bit higher than that. That said, General Managers generally get four or five years to make their mark on a team so it might still be early to look at replacing Peter Chiarelli.

When you look at the makeup of this team, are you satisfied? When you look at Peter Chiarelli’s work after being bumped in the second round of the playoffs, do you think he did enough to improve the team? Considering he didn’t lay down many bets and basically failed on every single one he did make, is that enough to cut the head off the snake and move forward with a different manager? Are we comfortable with the idea of this guy making more major changes to this hockey team?

Who could possibly be available to replace Chiarelli that isn’t an even bigger trainwreck? Would the Oilers be able to go to a well-run team like Nashville and ask to speak with their Assistant GM? Do we really want to risk the Oilers looking to hire from within again and promoting someone to the job that doesn’t deserve it? It’s happened before.

After being nominated for a Jack Adams Trophy just last season, Todd McLellan finds himself on the hot seat as the team in front of him can’t seem to get much of anything done on a consistent basis. Depending on who you ask, Todd McLellan is a big part of the problem and should be to blame for the Oilers lack of preparation on a nightly basis. Is Todd McLellan next in the line of coaches that have been blamed for the shortcomings of his team?

When you’re coaching a team with Connor McDavid and sitting in lottery country at the halfway point of the season you must know your job is on the line. When you add in the fact that the Oilers are on pace for a historically bad penalty kill at home then you’re taking a long walk down the short path to unemployment.

If you’ve been an Oilers fan for longer than a season or two, you’ve lived through the coaching carousel that went on during the Decade of Darkness. The reason I bring that up is because we already saw a long line of coaches come in and be expected to produce different results. Are we sure this would be any different? At some point, it’s hard to sail a ship when the builder forgot to give you a mast.

Now that I’ve laid out the options, I need you to tell me what the Oilers should do. Should they look at firing the coach? Firing the GM? Get rid of both? Neither?

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