Chiarelli opens up about life after stint with Oilers
Sometimes you have to take a step back to take a step forward.
It’s been nearly 14 months since Peter Chiarelli was told by the Edmonton Oilers his services were no longer required, his stay as president of hockey operations and general manager over after less than four years on the job.
While the 55-year-old Chiarelli took a well-deserved break after being given his walking papers by CEO and vice-chair Bob Nicholson on Jan. 22, 2019 with the Oilers sitting in seventh place in the Pacific Division with a 23-24-2 record, the Ottawa native accepted a job as a senior adviser to St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong last September.
Based out of Boston, Chiarelli, who led the Bruins to a Stanley Cup in 2011, has not only been watching talent at every level of hockey since he took on the role, he’s also been playing the role of mentor in the club’s scouting operation as the Blues strive to repeat as the champions this spring.
Agreeing to be interviewed by Postmedia for the first time since he was let go by the Oilers while on a scouting trip for the Blues that made its way through Ottawa this week, Chiarelli has had a lot of time to reflect on what he could have done better in Edmonton to help the Oilers be successful and the route he’d take if the opportunity to presents itself to be a GM again.
He’s had a lot of time to look back, but Chiarelli admits he should have taken more of a break from the game before settling on his next step with the Oilers. Only a week after being fired by the Bruins in April 2015, Chiarelli was named to replace Craig Mactavish as GM of the Oilers.
“I didn’t get a chance to reflect and in hindsight that’s important because you can go back and look at what you did well and what you might have done differently,” Chiarelli said over breakfast Monday.
“I had a few job offers right away and my thinking was, ‘Let’s just get back to work.’ ”
Chiarelli had worked his whole life and the thought of being out of a job didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t deserve to be fired in Boston and there’s a lot of players still on the roster there that he brought in. Edmonton was a whole different set of circumstances and being out of the GM’S chair for a little while has given him perspective.
“Now, working with St. Louis and a lot of people I’ve known before, they’re a tight-knit group,” Chiarelli said. “Doug Armstrong is a colleague and a friend and I’m advising him. It gives you a different look because as a GM, you’re always at 30,000 feet looking down and this is just a different angle and working with different people to see how they do things.
“I’m exposed to a different way of doing things and secondly, you’re not driving the bus so it gives you a way to expand the breadth of your hockey curve. Then, you can look back, at what I did in Edmonton, and when you come out of the job and you’re fired, especially in a Canadian market, it’s a difficult exercise as I’ve found out. I really wasn’t exposed to that in Boston.
“There’s a negative narrative out there and you can’t really rebut on why you did things.
The break has given me time to reflect on what I did in Edmonton: the good things, the bad things and the things I would do differently.”
In some ways, Chiarelli may have been a casualty of his club’s early success in Edmonton. When he sat down with owner Darryl Katz and Nicholson before taking the job, he presented a six-year plan to win the Stanley Cup. That was a similar route to the one Chiarelli took when he met with Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs in 2006 and presented a five-year plan to try to bring a championship back to the city.
“In a nutshell, I’m a very deliberate thinker and planner and I strayed from that,” he said. “I strayed from that on player personnel decisions, on making off-ice scouting and management decisions and that’s not how I went into it. But I did, so shame on me.”
Of course, it helped that Chiarelli took Connor Mcdavid No. 1 overall in his first draft with the Oilers in 2015, but he couldn’t have predicted in the spring of 2017 the Oilers would knock off the Sharks in Round 1 and then lose in Game 7 to the Ducks in Round 2. That bit of success tempted Chiarelli to deviate from his plan and in some ways, he learned his lesson the hard way on why he should have stuck to what he tabled.
“You go in with a longer look and in this day and age, it’s easy to stray from that longer look — especially when you make the playoffs for the first time in 10 years and you win a round,” Chiarelli said. “I knew it was coming and I should have been more forceful in my position on where we were in the plan, but it’s hard because you’ve got paying customers, an owner and people around you that feel you should take the next step.
“You see it happen in the NHL all the time. We’ve seen it happen this year and that’s a really hard position to be in. You have success early and you lose sight of the sequential building process. You see now a lot of the kids we drafted are playing there and are contributing.”
When he took over the Bruins in May 2006, Chiarelli was known as “Patient Peter.” He did fire coach Dave Lewis after one year and brought in coach Claude Julien after he was let go by the New Jersey Devils late in the 2006-07 season. Jacobs told the Boston Globe at that time that was Chiarelli’s “mulligan” and the move brought stability behind the bench.
You can’t blame Chiarelli and the people around him for wanting to expedite the process in Edmonton, but he had success in Boston because he didn’t deviate from his core principles. The pressure to win in a Canadian market is different and he felt the trades he made would help the team improve.
He’s his own worst critic and knows there were errors.
“You always want to get better,” said Chiarelli. “My biggest takeaway is that mistakes are made when you stray from a plan. That’s where I have to have the discipline I had before and having sat out a year, you think about it every day — about how you’re going to approach your next job and how you’re going to stick to your beliefs and your approach.”
His decision to deal forward Taylor Hall to the New Jersey Devils for defenceman Adam Larsson on June 29, 2016, is viewed as his most controversial move during his stay with the Oilers. Hall, who was dealt to the Arizona Coyotes earlier this season, went on to win the Hart Trophy that season.
Chiarelli said that move was made to allow Mcdavid to take over the dressing room and make sure the club had flexibility with its payroll down the road.
“That was a difficult one because we felt we wanted to give breathing room to Connor Mcdavid and with where the salaries would go, that’s a long look,” said Chiarelli. “Those are hard looks to execute. I liked the player we got. Adam Larsson is a good player, he’s not a sexy player, but he unfairly gets judged because it was a lopsided trade perception-wise.
“I had one offer. In hindsight, I should have waited but the development of Connor was very important and we felt that we had to clear some room for him — both salary room and room in the (dressing) room.”
Nobody is arguing with his decision to sign Leon Draisaitl to a long-term deal and goaltender Mikko Koskinen, signed just before he was fired, has emerged as the club’s top goalie.
Not being the final decision maker for awhile has been helpful.
“When you’re in the GM’S seat, you have a completely different lens,” said Chiarelli. “This has given me a slightly different lens. You’ve been the driver’s seat and you can come up with different ideas because of your experience. It’s the people around you that give you the ideas to formulate the team-building.
“It’s been really productive for me to be part of a team to help them and give them my experience.”
Chiarelli has spent a lot of time watching the decisions GMS around the league make and that will be helpful if he gets the opportunity to return to that role.
“You get the blinders on a little bit as a GM and you only look at what you’re doing,” Chiarelli said. “Now, I have a lot more time and I look at all the teams and what they’re doing and what decisions they’re making and the reasons, so it’s been a good survey for me.
“I’ve been a GM for about
1,000 games in this league, I’ve won a Stanley Cup, went to the final, won playoff rounds and
I’ve made mistakes because we all make mistakes, and it’s how you mitigate them and how you address them. I want to work another 20 years in this league. I’m still young in the big scheme of things and I have a lot of energy.”
He interviewed for the GM openings with expansion Seattle and Minnesota last summer that went to Ron Francis and Bill Guerin, respectively.
Chiarelli is determined to show he has what it takes to win again.
“There’s a negative narrative out there and I want the chance to dispel that because there shouldn’t be,” he said. “I want to win again, but I want to build it properly and I want to be patient in a timely manner.”
My biggest take-away is that mistakes are made when you stray from a plan. That’s where I have to have the discipline I had before.