The Edmonton Oilers made the first coaching change of the season by firing Jay Woodcroft and replacing him with Kris Knoblauch. Many wonder if it was the right move to fix this Oilers team, especially coming off a strong 4-1 win over the Seattle Kraken. If the struggles continue, people may look one peg up on the employment chain and call for Ken Holland’s job next.
Jason Gregor joined Matt Larkin and Steven Ellis on Daily Faceoff Live to talk about the Oilers, including the state of Holland’s job.
Jason Gregor: Well, Holland’s in the final year of his contract. I don’t think he’ll come back. Maybe he’ll be a consultant for a year or two if they wanted him and he wanted to do it, but I think he’s looking to move on after this season. Jeff Jackson doesn’t have a ton of experience, Holland has had a lot of experience.
Now the goaltending’s the one thing that falls on the GM without question, but when I look at the team and the players and the skill he’s brought in on forward and defense from the team he inherited, Edmonton’s got a lot of skill. They’re as talented as a lot of other teams, excluding the goaltending position, that’s the one where the Jack Campbell signing, not only for $5 million but for five years. If you had said it was a two-year deal, maybe you could live with it, but that’s a massive egg on the face of the GM, there’s no way to sugar coat that.
But guess what! When you make an error, you can sit and you can worry about it or you can fix it. So now, that’s 100% on the GM, and he’s got to fix that. And it’s not easy, look around the league with goaltending from year to year. You two study analytics and stats just as in-depth, probably way more than I do. Look from year-to-year, who would’ve thought Filip Gustavsson would have been this bad. Hell, Ilya Sorokin’s coming into Edmonton with a .907% save percentage behind a defensive-minded team. Goaltending is the most unpredictable one.
However, I wouldn’t have done a five-year contract with a guy who was never a proven regular starter. That’s the issue here, and that’s the one that’s 100% is on Holland.
More must-reads: