Eleven months after taking the Edmonton Oilers to their second straight Stanley Cup Final, and seven months after putting pen to paper on a three-year contract extension, Kris Knoblauch is out as the team’s head coach.

His unceremonious exit came at 5:58 a.m. MT Wednesday morning, two days after news leaked that the team had been stalled in attempts to talk to Bruce Cassidy about taking over behind the Oilers’ bench.

TSN’s Ryan Rishaug was first to report it was official.

Knoblauch joined the Oilers in Nov. 2024, replacing Jay Woodcroft after a disastrous 3-9-1 start to the season. The Oilers would go 46-18-5 through the rest of the season, finishing second in the Pacific Division for the fifth straight season. Edmonton would beat the L.A. Kings in five games, the Vancouver Canucks in seven games, and the Dallas Stars in six games en route to their first Stanley Cup Final since 2006, only to lose a one-goal game in Game 7 to the Florida Panthers.

The Oilers reloaded in the summer for another push, beating the Kings, Vegas Golden Knights, and Stars to punch their ticket to the final, but would fall to the Panthers once again, losing in six games, instead of seven.

Edmonton made a collective push to get younger ahead of this season, as the likes of Corey Perry, Evander Kane, John Klingberg, Jeff Skinner, Connor Brown, and Viktor Arvidsson were either traded, or left the team in free agency. The collective youth that entered the mix or took on larger roles — Matt Savoie, Josh Samanski, Vasily Podkolzin, Alec Regula, Ty Emberson, and Spencer Stastney — showed well, but the team as a whole did not.

Edmonton finished the season with a 41-30-11 record, a 50 per cent win rate, earning 93 standings points and a .567 points percentage, their lowest since the 2018-19 season when they last missed the playoffs. The team struggled through a “monotonous” regular season, and it carried into the playoffs, as the Oilers looked lifeless in their lone six games.

Knoblauch, after the Game 6 loss, admitted his team wasn’t hungry enough in the regular season.

“It certainly felt during the season that it was just a formality, the regular season, and everyone was looking forward to the playoffs so much,” he said. “We pushed so hard to get into the playoffs, then in the playoffs, we got so many guys injured that we just weren’t ready for it.

“This team has played a lot of hockey — the most games in the last three years, most games in the last five years, and on everybody’s minds was the playoffs. Unfortunately, the timing for us just wasn’t good.”

Knoblauch brought in Paul McFarland to replace Glen Gulutzan, who took on the Dallas Stars’ head-coaching job, and while Paul Coffey left after last season, such a change wouldn’t last long. Coffey returned to the Oilers’ bench coaching the blue line after the Olympic break in what was nothing short of an odd situation.

Now, the team finds itself in another odd position. It remains to be seen whether the Oilers had intended to move on from Knoblauch either way ahead of their attempts to speak with Cassidy, or if the team had just embarked on a fishing trip for information.

Either way, the Oilers are now on the hunt for a new head coach.

Zach Laing is Oilersnation’s managing editor, and The Nation Network’s news director. He also makes up one-half of the Daily Faceoff DFS Hockey Report. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.

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