Oilers coaching search most dramatic since 1994

The 1993-94 Oilers season was ghastly. Ted Green, a loyal soldier on the Oilers bench dating back to 1982-83, couldn’t help a severely depleted team from the glory days, which had missed the playoffs for the first time in franchise history the year before.

After beginning 1993 with a 3-18-3 start to the season, Sather fired Green and placed himself back behind the bench for the duration of the season, gaining some respectability, but ultimately finishing near the basement of the league.

Edmonton had rarely done a wide coaching search, save for 1980 when Bryan Watson was hired, but Sather still loomed heavily, and that experiment lasted just 18 games before Sather took the reins over again.

Otherwise, the Oilers hired internally, promoting John Muckler, then Ted Green, who had been long-time assistants or associate coaches. In June 1994, Sather said he had a stack of applications “two inches thick” for the job.

There were high-profile names like Mike Milbury, Bryan Murray, and Pierre Page out there, but they were expensive. Or a guy like Colin Campbell, who was part of the inaugural Oilers of 1979-80. Even hot-shot young candidates like Marc Crawford, who would get hired by the Quebec Nordiques and lead the Colorado Avalanche to the Stanley Cup in 1996.

But ultimately, the choice was between assistant coach Ron Low, who’d been with the Oilers since 1989, or farmhand coach with the Cape Breton Oilers, George Burnett, who had won the franchise’s first Calder Cup in the American Hockey League just a year before.

Sather said it was too big a decision to rush. And so on it went, and on… and on…

Then, news to me as I dug into this, Craig MacTavish’s name floated into the equation. MacTavish had played 66 games with the Oilers in 1993-94 before Sather did the veteran a favour and flipped him to the New York Rangers for Todd Marchant. MacT won the Cup that spring.

But at 36, there were rumours that Sather wanted MacTavish for the job, even though he hadn’t retired.

MacTavish was considered as early as 1994

The Philadelphia Flyers wanted the veteran, and MacT still wanted to play, so that idea was quashed. Plus, the Flyers were going to offer a reported $800,000 after a bidding war with the Rangers. Pretty good money in the day for the aging vet.

As we know, MacTavish wouldn’t become the Oilers coach until 2000 and would still play three more seasons before he hung up his skates (and not his helmet).

So Low and Burnett waited for a couple of months after they initially interviewed. There were suggestions that they co-coach together.

On July 6, Sather was quoted as saying:

“Maybe not until Aug. 3 or Aug. 4. I’m going fishing and Peter’s (Oilers owner Pocklington) in Europe attending a wedding,” Jim Matheson wrote in the Edmonton Journal. 

Ron Low was getting anxious:

“This is the first time I’ve been sick about hockey,” said Low in the July 6 edition, adding he’d accept any role that he’d be satisfied with.

Burnett didn’t know what was happening, and he was getting attention for other coaching vacancies:

“I don’t know any more today than I did on May 17, at the end of the season.”

Sather’s fishing took precedence in those days. Plus, Pocklington’s problems were growing, and the first real rumours of the Oilers had teeth. He had to secure a deal with Northlands Coliseum and was tangled like cat’s yarn in money borrowing and debts that made the future of the Oilers in Edmonton another anxious point.

Burnett chosen

Finally, the choice was made on Aug. 2, 1994, amidst an unusually large crowd of 5,000, with even bigger things than a head coach at stake.

Season ticket holders met Peter Pocklington with applause under a banner that said “Faceoff for the Future.” Renovations were going to happen to the Coliseum. It was treated as a relaunch, a time for optimism, as they believed they had survived hardship.

“It absolutely shocked me. I guess I was surprised to see people say, in their own way: ‘Thanks for keeping sports in Edmonton,'” said Pocklington.

Little did anyone know at this “love-in,” as columnist Cam Cole put it, that things were about to get worse for the Oilers before they got better. But Burnett was happy to get the job and to work together with Low.

“What a turnout for the introduction of your new head coach,” said Burnett to the crowd.

The time crunch from being hired to the start of training camp wouldn’t be as bad as under normal circumstances. The NHL and the Players Association were about to have the first lockout, which took away the first half of the season, and play under a truncated 48-game schedule.

Another Oiler Low

However much optimism was in the air that August day, things got ugly quickly for the rookie coach.

Burnett wouldn’t last even that shrunken schedule, gassed after just 35 games on April 7, 1995, the second fewest in Oilers’ history (WHA and NHL) behind only Bryan Watson. He holds a dubious title as one of the least-known Oilers coaches of all-time – a simple bit of trivia presiding over the Shayne Corson captaincy drama and locker room infighting.

The team was also not any good, and he finished with a 12-20-3 record as crowds started to dwindle to some of the lowest ever.

So Low would eventually get the gig after all and keep it until the end of 1998-99, and is etched into Oilers lore as part of the great upsets of the Dallas Stars in 1997 and the Colorado Avalanche in 1998.

Burnett would return to the AHL next season, wind up on the Anaheim bench in the late ’90s as an assistant, and become a long-time fixture in the Ontario Hockey League, winning two league championships with the Guelph Storm over two tenures, and coming close to a Memorial Cup. He even got some coaching nods with Hockey Canada at the World U18s, the Ivan Hlinka, and World Juniors.

He’d never get an NHL head coaching job again, though.

Cassidy, come on down

So the Oilers have some months to go to take the longest wait from 1994, a bygone era where a coachless duration of a few months wasn’t as big a deal.

Edmonton wants Bruce Cassidy, but how long are they willing to play this game of chicken, where they hold little leverage?

I suppose we’ll find out.