OIL KINGS ENTER NEW PHASE UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
GM and coach tasked with getting WHL franchise back to contending for titles
From a distance, some might wonder what really needed to be righted.
The Edmonton Oil Kings led the Western Hockey League in attendance these last two seasons at 9,461 and 8,154. And while they finished dead last in the 22-team league last year with a 22-42-8 record, they are the most recent Dub club to win a Memorial Cup.
Junior hockey teams who win Memorial Cups have a long history of ending up at the opposite end of the league in short order.
You’d figure a 23-win season followed by a 22-win season and leading the league in attendance both seasons would win some sports business seal of approval.
Instead, Oilers Entertainment Group boss Bob Nicholson effectively handed Oilers GM Peter Chiarelli a broom and told him he wasn’t expecting him to go out and take up curling.
Chiarelli cleaned house and Wednesday effectively put up an “Under New Management” sign on the Oil Kings corner of Rogers Place.
The Oilers GM introduced 30-year-old new head of hockey operations and general manager Kirt Hill in person and his kid hire turned around and introduced 51-year-old Brad Lauer via conference call as the new Oil Kings head coach.
“Communicating with the group over the last two years here I felt there was the need for a refreshing,” said Chiarelli of his reboot. “I felt like on the heels of the Memorial Cup that there should have been a little more progress. So I decided we needed to make the moves.”
When it came to attendance, there was a built-in mirage called Rogers Place. The most reasonable way to check out the new building was to attend a junior game.
Obviously, the Oilers Entertainment Group determined the novelty was beginning to wear off, and if the post-Memorial Cup bottoming out didn’t result in a quick trip back to the top, the attendance would drop dramatically.
Determining there was no trip back to the top in evidence here, Oil Kings general manager Randy Hansch and head coach Steve Hamilton were relieved of their duties and the new plan was put in place.
So who are these guys and what’s their plan to get this team on the up escalator and back into the playoffs again?
Even with the Oilers well in the toilet, it was kind of fun around here when the Oil Kings won WHL titles in 2012 and 2014 and went to Memorial Cups in Shawinigan, Que., (2012) and London, Ont (2014).
“Kirt is a very innovative young hockey mind,” Chiarelli said of the former Kelowna Rockets player who spent four years working in the WHL office and last season as an amateur scout with the Chicago Blackhawks.
Hill has effectively been on the job with the Oil Kings for weeks while also fulfilling duties with Chicago. It was the Hawks’ wish his hiring here not be announced until after the NHL Draft.
“In the hockey world, he’s young. But in the hockey IQ world, from what I’ve seen and I’ve been around for a while now, his aptitude is quite high,” said Chiarelli, who intends to turn the junior team over to Hill and “spend 99.9 per cent of my time running the Oilers.”
Hill knows what kind of team he wants.
“My vision for the team is that I want to play with pace. I want to have a fast team. I want to be a puck-possession team. And most of all I want our guys to compete every night,” he said. “For the player, we want to give him the best chance to develop and play at the next level, while at the same time developing players off the ice to be leaders in the community.”
He described former Tampa Bay assistant and new Oil Kings head coach Lauer as a communicator and a teacher.
The Oil Kings also announced Daniel Troiani, a seven-year employee in the ticketing department, has been named director of business operations.
But to the question. What’s the timetable for the youngish GM and his oldish head coach to return the Oil Kings to being a top team?
“Right now we’re in a good spot,” said Hill, who takes over a team that just made its first ever No. 1 overall selection in the bantam draft, taking local product Dylan Guenther. “We have a lot of good prospects I met at our development camp. Our young guys are really good players.
“I would hope that we’re going to be on our way up right now,” he said, indicating he hopes the players drafted in the last two years will have the ability to play for a championship contender as Oil Kings.
“It’s really important what we do next with their development,” he said. “We’ll need to get a few weeks into the season to make those kind of evaluations.”