Following a dismal season debut, the Oilers fire head coach Woodcroft and assistant Manson.
Following the team’s 3-9-1 start to the season, head coach Jay Woodcroft was fired by the Edmonton Oilers.
Even though the 47-year-old defeated the Kraken 4-1 on Saturday night in Seattle, it was not enough to keep him employed.
After taking over as interim head coach on February 10 following Dave Tippett’s firing, Woodcroft leaves the Oilers with a 79-41-13 record, the fifth-most wins in the NHL. Four months later, he signed a three-year contract.
Woodcroft led the team to the conference final in 2022, but the Colorado Avalanche, the eventual Stanley Cup winners, defeated them.
The Oilers declared that assistant coach Paul Coffey will accompany head coach Kris Knoblauch, who is currently coaching the Hartford Wolf Pack of the American Hockey League, in his new role with Edmonton.
Knoblauch spent three seasons as the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters’ coach of Oilers star Connor McDavid.
At a press conference on Sunday, Jeff Jackson, the team’s CEO of hockey operations, and general manager Ken Holland were joined by Knoblauch and Coffey.
The team decided to change coaches after their Thursday loss to the lowly San Jose Sharks, according to Holland.
“We’re in a business where you’ve got to win games,” he stated.
“It’s a reset,”
Knoblauch continued, referring to the new bench boss’s start of the campaign.
“A reset has occurred. “Hopefully, when our players see this, it relieves some of the pressure,” stated Knoblauch.
Superfan Adam Zainul of the Oilers told CBC Edmonton that, in light of Saturday night’s victory, Woodcroft’s firing is unexpected.
Zainul remarked, “I could kind of understand it if they lost.” “You receive punishment for good deeds. So, this decision is unclear.
After McDavid joined the team in 2015, Knoblauch becomes the organization’s fifth coach in 15 seasons and its tenth overall.
Edmonton believed it had learned its lessons from the previous two springs and went into this season hoping to win the Stanley Cup.
However, the Oilers were crushed 8-1 by the Canucks in their first game in Vancouver, and they were defeated 4-3 at home in the rematch.
Edmonton temporarily stabilized things with a 6-1 victory over the Predators in Nashville, but four straight aimless losses left the team with a 1-5-1 record going into the Heritage Classic outdoor showcase match against the Calgary Flames.
After the Oilers easily defeated the Flames 5-2, fans thought the team might have turned the corner. However, four straight losses ensued, the most recent of which was a 3-2 loss to the San Jose Sharks on Thursday in a matchup between the two worst teams in the NHL.
Asked on Thursday night, “I don’t really know what to say,” Draisaitl replied. “We probably consistently out-chance other teams and outshoot them in shots made. Not in time at the moment.”
McDavid has zero points in his last two games.
In Edmonton, Woodcroft had an abundance of offensive weapons at his disposal in the form of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evander Kane, McDavid, and Draisaitl. Darnell Nurse, Mattias Ekholm, and Evan Bouchard were his other defensemen.
The player with the longest contract in the team, forward Nugent-Hopkins, stated, “We can’t really be looking at the standings right now.” “It feels a little different just because the season is new. But as a team, we remain unchanged from the beginning. Right now, it feels strange.”
More bizarre? McDavid was kept off the scoreboard in the last two games, despite having the most points of any player since 1995–96 (153).
Despite missing time due to an unidentified upper body injury last month, he has managed to score 10 points in 11 games, with Draisaitl leading the team with 15.
The Oilers’ 2.69 goals per game are still more than the average of just six teams.
Nonetheless, the most difficult task turned out to be keeping the puck out of the Oilers’ net.
After a strong run with the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jack Campbell signed a five-year, $25 million US contract in July 2022 as a free agent. However, he was never able to duplicate those stats in the capital of Alberta.
After taking over the crease in the previous season and being selected to his first all-star game, rookie goalie Stuart Skinner ran out of gas during the playoffs.
While it was hoped that the two goalies would cooperate in 2023–2024, neither has performed well. After being waived on November 7, Campbell is currently a goalie for Edmonton’s AHL affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors.
