Coming from an Edmonton Oilers point of view, BLH provides you with excerpts from the latest NHL news, rumors, and speculation from all of the internet’s best sites including Spector’s Hockey, The Fourth Period, NHL Trade Talk, The Hockey Writers, Sportsnet, The Athletic, TSN and more!
From Oilers Now
A Divide Amongst the Ranks In Edmonton?
We’ve talked about locker room divisions with the Edmonton Oilers in the past, but not so much on organizational divisions. Yesterday on Oilers Now host Bob Stauffer had quite a few juicy tidbits to talk about including a potential rift between the club’s pro scouting, coaching, and management departments that could be having an impact on how they go about procuring certain assets this offseason.
- “First of all, when a new regime comes in and it’s less than two years working together, how quickly can you truly evaluate the work of the pro scouts? How much impact do the pro scouts actually have? Like, does a head coach have more input with the general manager?”
- “It’s entirely possible that the reports from the pro scouts would be negative on a player but the coach would want to go ahead and do the deal and the general manager would listen to the coach.”
- “When Brandon Manning and Alex Petrovic were acquired on the same day, I’m not sure everybody in the organization was 100% thinking that as going to be the solution but if you’re Ken Hitchcock, who was coaching the team at the time, and you’re down a couple of defensemen, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘We gotta get some help here. We gotta do something.’ and as it turned out, those two trades did not work out for the Edmonton Oilers. I doubt that pro scouting was overwhelmingly in support of those deals at that time.”
- “It’s a microcosm of a greater challenge. How do you get the respective parts of the organization to all pull on the proverbial rope the same way?”
- “You have a coaching staff and they want things in the here and now. You have management who have to work in concert with the coaching staff and sort of interlay things so that you’ve got some form of organic growth, which is necessary during a cap system. You can’t just make trades and sign free agents and address all of your weaknesses.”
- “There’s an opportunity for Evan Bouchard but that means the coaching staff has to be patient with Evan Bouchard! Some might say last year Evan Bouchard, based on training camp should’ve been playing ahead of Ethan Bear out of the gate but he hadn’t built the currency with the coaching staff from the year before like Ethan Bear had.”
- “The Oilers aren’t going to magically improve and become a top-8 team solely through free agency. They’re probably going to have to make a trade to get at least a 2nd pairing left-shot defenseman IF Oscar Klefbom can’t return and my guess is that we’re probably 75/25 that Klefbom isn’t coming back.No, you can’t just plug Caleb Jones in there. He didn’t get it done this past year and they need better than that. They need more experience and probably a bit bigger than that.”
- “I’m not sure you look at the free agency lists for third-line centers out there whether or not one can be acquired without doing a trade. You might be able to address some of the challenges on LW via free agency.”
- “I can tell you this, the best organizations work cohesively from top-to-bottom. They work together. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing.”
On Oliver Ekman-Larsson
- “I’m lead to believe that the Arizona Coyotes are going to have to contemplate doing a deal similar to what the St. Louis Blues did with Ryan O’Reilly where Buffalo moved out ROR and STL moved a couple of contracts out and then a couple of good pieces. The only problem with that is Edmonton is going to have to pay Darnell Nurse and Nurse is right in his wheelhouse whereas some people see Oliver Ekman-Larsson as a declining asset.”
On the Nugent-Hopkins Negotiations
- “I’d say it’s 50/50 and it’s understandable. Nuge would likely have interest from some organizations like Columbus, Seattle, Anaheim, LA.”
BLH’s Thoughts: So if you’re wondering, all those quotes came from the first segment of the June 22nd edition of Oilers Now and it starts around the 8-minute mark.
After I listened to that I contacted one of my Edmonton sources and asked him what was going on and here’s what I was told,
- Not sure if Dave Tippett will be re-signed. He’s a good coach but he’s wearing out his welcome with the organization. You might start to hear some Jay Woodcroft promotion rumors next season.
- The pro scouts were f*cking pissed that Holland decided to go with Tippett’s recommendation at the trade deadline of defensemen instead of their choice, Taylor Hall.
- The pro scouts have fully embraced advanced analytics by the way.
- There’s frustration within the organization with how Evan Bouchard was sat for so long despite the struggles of Caleb Jones and Ethan Bear.
- Some in the organization are still fuming that Tippett sat a big chunk of the lineup in game four against Winnipeg.
As I was listening to Bob’s rant, I got the feeling that he was not happy with how Dave Tippett is running his roster. I don’t want to say he was throwing Tippett under the bus, but when Stauffer is unhappy with a coach or a GM, he’s a little less subtle about it.
The cool thing about Jay Woodcroft possibly getting promoted to the Oilers bench is that he’ll have a working relationship with like 95% of the roster. Most of the players will be remaining from the McLellan era or will have played in Bakersfield when during Woody’s tenure down there.
That said, the waters in Edmonton are a little bit rocky at the moment and I’m not sure there could be a worse time for the club’s three main departments to be on separate pages.
On the bright side, with the pro scouts meetings over, there should start to be some more tangible rumors popping up going forward.
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