The Oilers Shot Themselves in the Foot Yet Again

At some point, every NHL front office learns the hard way: hockey plans rarely go as cleanly as they look on paper.

The Oilers felt this sting. They gave Kris Knoblauch the boot on May 14 after a messy early playoff exit, even with those recent Finals runs. Everyone figured it was really about freeing up the job for Bruce Cassidy, who’d just been let go in Vegas.

Except Vegas isn’t playing ball. The Golden Knights are still blocking Cassidy from interviewing elsewhere while he’s owed money on his deal. Suddenly, what looked like a clean upgrade has turned into an awkward waiting game.

And now the uncomfortable question fans could be asking: Can the Oilers just… go back and get Knoblauch? The short answer is complicated. The longer one reveals a lot about how this league actually works.

Why Can’t the Oilers Just Hit Undo on Knoblauch’s Firing?

When a team fires a coach, it’s not a pause button. It’s a full termination. The old contract ends. Any remaining money becomes dead cap — a payout obligation rather than an active employment obligation. There’s no mechanism to magically restore the previous arrangement.

Even if everyone wanted Knoblauch back, it wouldn’t be simple. You would need to redo a whole new contract (terms, length, money), and he’d actually have to want to come back to the team that just fired him.

It’s happened before in sports, but it’s rare for a reason. Pride, optics, and locker room dynamics all get messy.

The Double Contract Confusion

Adding to the issue is Knoblauch’s contract situation. He signed a three-year extension last October that was set to kick in this summer. After the firing, he’s owed money on the current deal while the extension sits there on paper. But that doesn’t mean he has two active jobs. Only one role can exist at a time. The old deal is dead; the new one isn’t active yet.

If he signs somewhere else in the meantime, things get even more complicated. Teams don’t just auto-cancel contracts because a better offer appears.

The real frustration in Edmonton stems from the timing. If the plan was to move on from Knoblauch to hire Cassidy, then Vegas’s dragging its feet creates a leadership vacuum. McDavid and the core are waiting. The search drags on. Second-guessing grows louder.

This is classic NHL front-office gambling: betting on an upgrade that isn’t guaranteed to be available when you need it.