On this week’s 31 Thoughts podcast, Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman were talking about the Edmonton Oilers situation and Friedman brought up Peter Chiarelli and why he basically went into hiding and only had a few people around him at the end of his tenure in Edmonton. He said that someone who he thought wasn’t that close to the former Oilers/Bruins GM reached out to him to speak on behalf of Chiarelli and this is what was told to the insider,
FYI: You can listen to the podcast at the bottom end of this post!
“I think he felt that some things he hoped would remain private went public, so he lost trust and that’s why he wasn’t talking to anybody.”
It’s kind of funny. Not once since Chiarelli’s firing did anybody wonder why he became so distant and the end. The majority of the conversation around him was about the quality of the transactions he’d completed.
Friedman said that he would send Chiarelli texts asking him about something he was working on and there would never be a reply, the source of the quote above also commented on that,
“He would get those texts and would be like, “I can’t keep a secret.” And that’s why he wasn’t talking to anybody.”
We heard the Oilers radio colorman, Bob Stauffer, say that in the final months of Chiarelli’s tenure that he was only working with Duane Sutter and Ken Hitchcock. Now, did he feel that those men were to be trusted and everyone else he had in his management staff weren’t to be? Men like current interim GM Keith Gretzky, Craig MacTavish, Scott Howson, Paul Messier, and Chris Cichocki.
Were those gentlemen that source of the leaks coming out of Edmonton? Stauffer seemed to have some pretty good intel on some of the happenings going on in the past… Maybe Peter’s brother Michael was the one.
And if Chiarelli thought that he needed to spend the remaining months of his Oilers career in a bunker, why didn’t he just let go the ones who he thought were breaking his trust? Maybe because it would’ve needed to go through Nicholson and Katz? Do you think Bobby Nicks would’ve greenlit the dismissal of those long-tenured senior management employees? I don’t think so… So I imagine he did what he felt he had to do…
That said, loose lips sink ships…
For what it’s worth, there are few GMs in the league that run a super tight-lipped ship. Stuff gets out. Ron Hextall (Friedman also mentioned that Hextall going solo in PHI was also due to a trust issue) and Ron Francis were known to be a couple and also Lou Lamoriello as well. If Chiarelli though that he was going to go into a market like Edmonton his word was going to stay behind office doors, that’s on him and he could’ve used that in his favor had he been clever enough.
Perhaps he should’ve used the reaction to the some of the rumored deals that got out to gauge the value of said deal?… Just an idea to throw out there. I mean, you never want to do your job according to how the fanbase of your team feels but there can be value found by listening to others too.
As if things weren’t going to slip out with all those ex-GMs in his management team. Did Craig MacTavish not use the media to his advantage when he was running the team? Kevin Lowe too? I can’t really recall Steve Tambellini doing much during his time with the Oilers apart from being a puppet for the OBC!
The Oilers have all these ex-players/management types still working for them and they have very good relationships with the local media… C’mon man… A Harvard educated person should be a bit more on the ball than that.
What do you think about Friedman’s comments? Let us know in the comments below!
