Somehow, Chiarelli is still employed
Let’s get this straight.
The man who traded last season’s Hart Trophy winner, who essentially swapped out Jordan Eberle for Ryan Spooner and who signed Milan Lucic to a seven-year, US$42-million contract still has a job today. And the man who was one game below .500 with a team that had no defence, no forward depth and no goaltending is now out of work. Does that make sense? Make no mistake, the Edmonton Oilers needed to do something this week. With U.S. Thanksgiving arriving this week — the litmus test for determining if you’ll be in the playoffs — the team had sunk to sixth place in what is by far the worst division in the NHL, having lost six of its last seven games before Tuesday’s game against the Sharks.
A change was necessary. And it needed to be more than just another Ryan Strome for Spooner type of deal. So the decision to replace head coach Todd McLellan with Ken Hitchcock, who came out of retirement for another kick at the can, would be justified if only it weren’t general manager Peter Chiarelli handing out the pink slip.
This should have been a 2-for-1 firing. This was Chiarelli’s mess as much as it was McLellan’s.
Instead, Chiarelli lives on for another day. But the hot seat just went up several degrees. The Oilers have to make the playoffs or he’s gone. And he knows it.
“The hot seat or whatever words you want to use, I feel like I’ve been under scrutiny and justifiably so prior to this, too,” Chiarelli said in a conference call. “If this makes me under scrutiny more, I understand. As far as roster moves and trades, we’ ll look at them. But there won’ t be anymore urgency to it than there already is.”
The danger in keeping Chiarelli around is he’s desperate. This is the same GM who traded Tyler Seguin when he was in Boston, who traded away two No. 1 picks — Taylor Hall and Nail Yakupov — since coming to Edmonton. Now that his job is on the line, maybe he will make it three No. 1 picks and part ways with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
For now, Chiarelli has to hope Hitchcock is enough of a change to steady the ship. When asked if the Oilers are better than their 9-10-1 record would indicate, Chiarelli said: “I feel it’s good enough. There’s obviously areas to improve, but I think in this league and with the parity in this league, margins are very thin.”
Maybe Hitchcock’s defensive schemes will make life easier on Cam Talbot, who has an .888 save percentage.
Maybe Jesse Puljujarvi and Kailer Yamamoto, who are both in the minors after failing to cut it under McLellan, will find new life under a new bench boss. Or maybe Connor McDavid wills this team into the playoffs like he did a couple of years ago.
That’s what this is about. That’s why this coaching change was made. It’s not necessarily about the Oilers making the playoffs this year. It’s about not wasting the prime years of McDavid’s career.