Another former Edmonton Oiler has joined the Seattle Kraken.
The team announced on Wednesday that Dave Tippett has been hired as a coaching consultant. He won’t be on the bench with Dave Hakstol and his coaching staff but Tippett will provide assistance for the club behind the scenes.
Tippett played 721 NHL games with the Hartford Whalers, Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Philadelphia Flyers. He played his final professional season in 1994-95 with the Houston Aeros of the AHL and took over as the team’s head coach the following season.
After three years of coaching in the IHL, Tippett was hired by the Los Kings to join Andy Murray’s coaching staff as an assistant. Tippett stayed in that role for three seasons before getting his first head coaching gig in the NHL with the Dallas Stars in 2002-03.
In Tippett’s first season with Dallas, the Stars posted a 46-17-15-4 record and beat the Oilers in the first round of the playoffs. The Stars made the playoffs in each of Tippett’s first five seasons with the club but they missed out in 2008-09 after the team posted a disappointing 36-35-11 record.
The Phoenix Coyotes hired Tippett as their head coach in September of 2009 after Wayne Gretzky resigned from the position. The team posted a 50-25-7 record in Tippett’s first season, a club record for wins, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs.
The Coyotes made the playoffs in each of the next two seasons and made a run to the Western Conference Final in 2012 but fell out of contention over the next few years. Tippett was fired after Arizona went 30-42-10 during the 2016-17 season.
The Kraken hired Tippett as a senior advisor in the summer of 2018 and it looked as though he would be the first coach in team history. Instead, the NHL delayed the inaugural season of the Kraken by a year and Tippett took an opportunity with Ken Holland and the Oilers.
Tippett led the Oilers back into the playoffs in 2019-20 and during the shortened 2021 season but got fired in February of 2022 when the team wasn’t performing as planned. Tippett didn’t take on another gig after the Oilers let him go and it appeared as though he would go quietly into retirement.
Instead, Tippett is back with the organization that he played a role in getting off the ground. Tippett joins a handful of former Oilers in Seattle, including Jordan Eberle, Adam Larsson, Justin Schultz, and the newly-signed Kailer Yamamoto.
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