Edmonton’s head coach has not managed to correct the crooked culture, which makes it impossible to continue working at the club, writes Tommi Seppälä, Urheilu’s NHL editor.
Tommi Seppälä NHL reporter
Never before has talent been wasted in the NHL the way it has been mistreated in Edmonton in recent years. If anyone thought the slump of the 2010s was the darkest period in the Oilers’ relatively short club history, I suggest you think again. The rankings have improved, but as an organization, the club is now even worse than before.
The fact that it doesn’t Connor McDavid’s and Leon Draisaitl to have still been able to build a competitive entity around is a terrible failure on the part of the club management.
Of course, now we have to remember the financial challenges caused by the corona pandemic in the NHL. The league hasn’t been allowed to raise the salary cap in recent years practically at all. This has partly made the operating environment more difficult. Of course, the rules are the same for everyone.
Edmonton has taken unfathomable stray shots in recent years. Darnell Nurse A long contract guaranteeing average annual earnings of 9.5 million is like Juha Hirven the first shot in the small-arms final of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 – it should have been a six, it was a five.
Even worse, the goalkeeper went to the forest by Jack Campbell with.
In the first years of the 2020s, Edmonton had a constant goaltending conflict. It didn’t work Mikko Koskinenand did not qualify Mike Smith. And the duo didn’t always succeed in the name of honesty. When the Oilers got out of this one, what had they learned?
Nothing at all.
GM Ken Holland slapped five years and 25 million in the face of Jack Campbell, who played one season as a starting goalkeeper in the summer of 2023. On Tuesday, the club put the Canadian guard on the transfer list, from where he will move to the AHL. Eventually, the contract will be bought out.
The biggest mistake has still happened in management. The Oilers are an undisciplined team that doesn’t seem to be led by anyone. A young and inexperienced head coach Jay Woodcroft watches the floats of expensive key players and pulls through his fingers, as apparently GM Holland also does.
Free education is rampant and the culture has grown ugly and crooked. When boundaries are not set, everyone gets hurt.
There are all the grounds for changing the head coach after the fall. Those grounds could also be sought from last season. In the name of honesty, I don’t know under what conditions Ken Holland would continue in office if they really wanted to clean the house.
Hirvi shot one weak shot in the Barcelona final, Holland has a whole series of them.
I don’t think that the upper floor cleans the whole house in the middle of the season. Holland’s five-year contract is about to expire in the summer anyway.
If Holland wanted to correct his mistakes in the goalkeeping department, this is an excellent opportunity. Nashville is facing an inevitable rebuilding project and has a young goaltending department developing, so one of the NHL’s goaltending elite Juuse Saros might well be available.
Saros still operates with an affordable contract of five million, which also covers the 2024–2025 season.
It would be worthwhile for Holland to put together a sufficient package with booking shifts and days and try by all means to get Saros to Edmonton. Goalkeepers of this level – and price range – do not come around every day.
After that, a coach should be replaced. Everything in the sign language of the unwilling and phlegmatic players tells that the coach has lost his cool. At least on some level. And even if it isn’t, the game tells the rest. Either Woodcroft doesn’t know how to organize the game, or he watches selfish soloing through his fingers – both worse.
Where Edmonton would find a coach with enough experience and tough authority to rebuild a totally moldy culture is a difficult question. There are almost no coaches of that level on the market.
The only thing that is certain is that Edmonton cannot continue like this.