The Edmonton Oilers’ rumour mill is constantly churning, win or lose.
Even though much of the talk in the media and among fans had centered on what would happen with the National Hockey League team and its massive misfire to begin the season, billed as a Stanley Cup or Bust type of campaign by both players and executives, the decidedly predictable outcome of the head coach and his top assistant losing their jobs came as a surprise to the Oilers’ top-draw superstar.
“I didn’t see it coming,” said Connor McDavid, the NHL’s reigning most valuable player and leading scorer, who hasn’t scored a goal in nearly a month and currently ranks 113th on the league scoring list with 10 points in 11 games this season.
McDavid told reporters after morning skate Monday that he woke up to the news of head coach Jay Woodcroft and assistant Dave Manson being fired after a 3-9-1 start to 2023-24 in a text on Sunday “like probably a lot of you guys did as well” and learning his former junior coach, Kris Knoblauch, was taking over the bench.
“He never lost the room, I didn’t think,” McDavid said when asked if Woodcroft’s message was getting through to the players, a sentiment echoed by fellow star center Leon Draisaitl.
“He’s an excellent coach.” “He’s going to have a lot of success wherever he goes,” said Draisaitl, a former MVP and leading scorer who has 15 points in 13 games this season, good for 31st on the NHL scoring list. “There’s no way he could have lost anyone in here.” We are, after all, the ones on the ice. We’re as prepared for any given night as any other team in the league. It is up to us to improve.”
Knoblauch, who ran Monday’s skate before the team’s evening (7 p.m.) game against the New York Islanders, will be McDavid’s fifth head coach and Draisaitl’s seventh since the stars were drafted by the Oilers in 2015 and 2014, respectively.
“We’ve had a lot of success here, too,” he told journalists. “Over the last two years, we’ve won over 100 games.” People have a habit of forgetting this. It’s certainly not the start we wanted, but that’s entirely on us.”
Knoblauch, a former University of Alberta Golden Bears forward and seventh-round pick of the New York Islanders who joined the coaching ranks with the Western Hockey League’s Prince Albert Raiders in 2006 after a minor-pro career, said he will try to make things “as simple as possible” for the players as he gets to know them, adding that he wants to instill confidence in a group that he sees as dealing with “frustration” even while
“I think it’s really important that players feel themselves, feel confident, and put the start of the season behind them,” said Knoblauch, who coached McDavid with the junior Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters and won league titles as a bench boss in both the OHL and the WHL. “We discussed some minor changes to our systems and will proceed from there; as the season progresses, there will be more and more changes, but we are not reinventing the wheel.” We’re not doing anything particularly drastic. We just need to get better at executing details, and everything will fall into place.”
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