Oilers add Hitchcock after firing McLellan
EDMONTON — The Edmonton Oilers have fired head coach Todd McLellan and replaced him with Ken Hitchcock.
Edmonton was languishing in sixth place in the Pacific Division with a 9-10-1 record entering its game Tuesday night in San Jose against the Sharks.
McLellan was in his fourth season behind the Oilers’ bench. The team missed the playoffs in two of his previous three campaigns despite having superstar Connor McDavid on its roster.
Hitchcock returns despite announcing his retirement in April after a 22-year coaching career, which included a Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999.
McLellan is the fourth coach in the National Hockey League to be fired this year, following John Stevens in Los Angeles, Joel Quenneville in Chicago and Mike Yeo in St. Louis.
There were no in-season coaching changes in the NHL in 201718, the first time that had happened since 1966-67.
While the axe fell on McLellan in Edmonton, there’s plenty of blame to go around for the Oilers’ plight, including a series of trades and signings by general
manager Peter Chiarelli that have failed to compliment a topheavy roster led by McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
Among Chiarelli’s missteps were the trade of winger Taylor Hall to New Jersey for defenceman Adam Larsson in June 2016, and the free-agent signing of bruising forward Milan Lucic to a massive seven-year, US$42million contract a few days later.
Hall won the Hart Trophy as league MVP last season, while Lucic has two goals in his last 66 games.
McLellan was the sixth man to coach the Oilers since the team fired Craig McTavish at the end of the 2008-09 season, following Pat Quinn, Tom Renney, Ralph Krueger, Dallas Eakins and Todd Nelson.
Hitchcock, 66, served as Dallas head coach twice (1995-2002, 2017-18) to go along with stops in Philadelphia (2002-2006), Columbus (2006-2010) and St. Louis (2011-2017).
The Edmonton native sits third in career coaching wins with 823 behind only Scotty Bowman (1,244) and Quenneville (890). Hitchcock led Dallas to consecutive Presidents’ trophies (199798, 1998-99) and was the NHL’s top coach in 2011-12 with St. Louis.