Oilers Snag Surprise Coach from Division Rival as Team's New Assistant

Mark Stuart will be replacing Paul Coffey on defence

Mark Stuart will oversee the defence, replacing Paul Coffey. With that in mind, Knoblauch won't be hiring McFarland as a defence coach.

The coaches all work together and share their input on the forwards, defence, penalty kill and powerplay, but he still likes to have one person directly responsible for the power play and the penalty kill, which remains to be seen if that will be McFarland's role.

'I think the guy they're really going to miss is Gully (Gulutzan). I wouldn't want to be coming in here following that power play act (laughs). And you have to manage the stars. Everybody thinks it's easy, but it's not that easy. Those guys are really demanding. They don't suffer fools very well, and they want competence immediately. And if there's any hint of incompetence, then you have a huge problem. It'll be interesting who they bring in to do that (power play). That's going to be somebody with a lot of experience, I would guess.'

- Craig MacTavish

They need a new PP coach, so it remains to be seen if McFarland will oversee either that, or the PK or possibly even work in tandem with Stuart. The PK struggled last year.