Analyzing Wayne Gretzky’s fit behind the Edmonton Oilers’ bench

The Edmonton Oilers fired Kris Knoblauch on May 14 and the coaching rumour mill has been spinning ever since. Most of the serious talk has centred on Bruce Cassidy and a few other experienced names have also been floated around.

Now one name that has surfaced in fan discourse out of the blue is probably the most beloved in Oilers franchise history, Wayne Gretzky.

Last week I posted a thread about the coaching search on Reddit, and at least a dozen people brought up Gretzky unprompted. Had to sit with that for a while.

It sounds like a dream. It also sounds, if we’re being realistic, very unworkable. But it came up enough that it felt like it deserved a proper look before dismissal.

Oilers are under pressure to land the right fit behind the bench

Knoblauch was, by any objective measure, a pretty good coach. He took over in November 2023 with the team sitting at a dismal 3–9–1, and turned things around almost immediately. Then he led the club to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals in 2024 and 2025, both resulting in losses. Knoblauch finished with a regular season record of 135–77–21 and a playoff mark of 31–22. Those are solid numbers. He had just signed a three-year extension worth more than $7.5M total.

And then the Oilers were eliminated in six games in the first round by the Anaheim Ducks. GM Stan Bowman and CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson had already been caught trying to schedule a meeting with Vegas Golden Knights Coach Bruce Cassidy, while Knoblauch was still employed. That public pursuit of his replacement basically sealed his fate before any official announcement was made.

Both Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have made it clear at the series exit interviews that they were worried the championship window was in danger. McDavid famously called the Oilers “an average team with high expectations” after the Game 6 loss. The organization is now under some real pressure.

So in the climate desperate for a spark and to get the team re-energized and committed, the most famous name in Oilers history doesn’t sound too absurd I guess.

Gretzky means so much to Edmonton

You cannot overstate what Wayne Gretzky meant to this city and this franchise. He arrived as a teenager, joined the Oilers when they entered the NHL in 1979 and over nine seasons helped build one of the most dominant dynasties in professional sports history.

Under Head Coach Glen Sather, those Oilers won five Stanley Cups in seven years. Gretzky was at the centre of the first four, playing alongside Hall of Famers Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey and Grant Fuhr. The style of hockey they played was fast, offensive, relentless.

Gretzky led the Oilers to four Stanley Cup victories while winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP in both 1985 and 1988. He set records in Edmonton that still haven’t been touched.

Then came the trade. In August 1988, Gretzky was dealt to the Los Angeles Kings in a move that many Edmontonians still consider one of the darkest days in the city’s sporting history. The Oilers somehow won another Cup in 1990 without him, but the dynasty was over. And in many ways, the city never fully healed.

He’s the most beloved Oiler of all time, and for a fanbase that has watched two more Finals appearances come and go without a championship, the idea of him coming back to finish the job even in a different role, carries a kind of mythological weight.

Now to be or not to be, it’s worth examining with some clear eyes.

How good was Wayne Gretzky’s coaching career

Well, nowhere near his playing career. Gretzky became head coach of the Phoenix Coyotes in 2005, having already been a part-owner of the team since 2001. He came in with zero prior coaching experience at any level of hockey straight to the NHL bench.

He was optimistic about it. “I really practiced hard, I really knew who I was going to play against,” he said at the time. “Each and every night, I spent countless hours in the video rooms going over things with coaches like John Muckler, so I made myself into the player that I became, and that’s the way I’m going to coach.”

But it didn’t really work out that way. Over four seasons, Gretzky went 143–161–24 and never once made the playoffs. The Coyotes finished 12th, 15th, 12th, and 13th in the Western Conference during his tenure. The team allowed a lot of goals. They gave up 284 in the 2006–07 season alone, which ranked among the worst in the league that year.

The criticism from inside and outside the locker room had a lot of discourse about coaching inconsistency. Former Coyotes defenceman Derek Morris said the team was “changing systems every single day” under Gretzky. The consensus at the time was that there was no clear defined identity to how they played. The offseason after Gretzky left, Dave Tippett took over the same roster and immediately turned it into a playoff team finishing fourth, sixth and third in the Western Conference in his first three years.

The comparison stings that Gretzky, for all his genius as a player, struggled to translate that genius into coaching. He reportedly struggled to connect with players in the way a conventional coach would. And the complicating factor of being a part-owner of a financially troubled franchise probably made everything messier.

He re-signed in September 2009 as the team filed for bankruptcy, citing the fact that the new prospective owners had made clear he didn’t fit into their plans.

Since then, Gretzky has stayed involved in hockey in other ways but has never returned to a coaching role. And by all accounts, he hasn’t been itching to.

Oilers need a different fit entirely

In his early tenure especially, Kris Knoblauch was praised for instilling a “boring” dump-and-chase style. The Oilers became harder to play against and arguably more disciplined. It worked well enough to reach two Finals.

The issue in 2025–26, based on how the season went was that the team seemed to lose that defensive identity. They finished 41–30–11, good enough for second in the Pacific Division, but clearly something wasn’t clicking at a high enough level when it mattered. The Ducks, a younger and less decorated team, eliminated them in six games.

What Bowman and Jackson are looking for is someone who can bring a structured system, re-energize the room, get the best out of McDavid and Draisaitl and compete for a Cup. McDavid is 29 now. The championship window exists, but of course it’s not infinite.

Gretzky’s coaching history with no playoff appearances and issues developing young players doesn’t obviously match that profile.

So why keep floating his name?

Because this is Edmonton, and because Gretzky is Gretzky. There’s a real argument that his presence alone would re-energize the fanbase and maybe even McDavid himself. Gretzky has recently been public about his belief that McDavid genuinely wants to stay in Edmonton and win there. The two share a kind of historical connection with Gretzky as the greatest Oiler, McDavid as the current one. If anyone could inspire McDavid to recommit, wouldn’t it be the man who wore 99?

There’s also the broader symbolic appeal. The Oilers have burned through coaches faster than most franchises in recent memory. This would be their tenth head coach in fifteen years. Some feel like the problem is deeper than any one coaching hire can fix and a legendary name might at least buy goodwill and time.

And to be fair to Gretzky, he was coaching a financially unstable team in a non-traditional hockey market with limited talent. The Oilers in 2026 are the opposite situation with some elite talent and genuine Cup expectations. The circumstances would be completely different.

It’s still very unlikely to happen

Here are a few hard realities naturally. Gretzky hasn’t coached in 17 years. The NHL in 2026 is a different game tactically. Modern coaching requires a very specific, up-to-date skill set. Gretzky has been out of it for nearly two decades.

His coaching record is also genuinely poor. A 143–161–24 record with no playoff appearances followed by the team immediately improving under his successor, is hard to look past. It’s not a sample size problem as that can be argued because four years is a reasonable test.

There is no indication he wants the job. This is very important because Gretzky has been making media rounds lately talking about McDavid and the Oilers’ situation, but he’s been careful to stay in an ambassador role. He recently said he doesn’t want to meddle in the Oilers’ affairs. And that’s clearly not the posture of someone angling for the bench.

The Oilers are full on pursuing experienced candidates. The fact that they went after Bruce Cassidy, a Cup-winning, experienced bench boss tells you what kind of hire Bowman and Jackson are actually looking for. They want proven modern coaching credentials. A nostalgic gamble on a first-time-in-17-years coach doesn’t fit that mold.

The honest verdict

Gretzky coming back to Edmonton to lead the Oilers to a championship would be one of the greatest stories in hockey history. It would be romantic.

But the evidence from his only coaching stint is genuinely concerning. The modern game demands a level of tactical precision and up-to-date preparation that would require Gretzky to essentially rebuild his coaching knowledge from the ground up. He’s been out of the game in any operational capacity for years. And there’s no indication he wants back in.

The Oilers meanwhile need someone who can get structure out of a talented group that clearly lost its way in 2025–26. They need someone McDavid and Draisaitl will buy into for what could be the final two or three peak seasons of their primes.

Gretzky belongs in Edmonton. In the rafters, in the memory of every fan who watched him play. But behind the bench in 2026? As unlikely as it felt when I first read those replies, it feels even less likely now that we’ve actually gone through the numbers.