MacT stays course on Oilers future.
Season-ending address leaves heads shaking
Craig MacTavish rates high on passion, loyalty and especially confidence, stellar qualities in a National Hockey League general manager, all things being equal.
But Edmonton Oilers fans might be forgiven for thinking, to their slack-jawed amazement, that any or all of those traits can loosen MacTavish’s grip on reality.
For example, MacTavish noted Monday during his end-of-season wrap-up news conference: “I think the fans have seen and appreciated the fact that we can make six or seven passes and still have the puck.”
He was talking about the club’s embryonic puck-possession style, and MacTavish meant this as a compliment, a marker of improvement. Still, hearing that one, disbelieving supporters of this 24-44-14, 62-point team must have uttered an oath. Or choked on their coffee and doughnut. Or worse. I mean, what’s next, bouquets for being able to skate backward? Plaudits for being able to lift the puck?
Or this: “There is no greater springboard to development than failure,” MacTavish said at one point, discussing how defenceman Justin Schultz’s game, particularly his unsatisfactory defensive-zone work, was coming along.
Schultz, clearly, is going to fail his way to Norris Trophy status, just you wait and see, you skeptics.
Or this: “I know I’m losing credibility, but I see a very entertaining, very impactful, very successful era of Oilers hockey on the horizon.”
When MacTavish acknowledged that the fans — whom he thanked, more or less, for not rioting on the Rexall Place plaza over another wretched 82-game performance — had every right to be frustrated at the team’s “seven years” out of the playoffs, I swear I could hear an apoplectic chorus of the faithful shouting, “Nine, Craig, it’s nine straight nonplayoff years!”
Who among us can’t empathize with that, though? The years long ago started to bleed together for many observers. And the fans, well, they’ve just been bleeding for nearly a decade.
But on a day when Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan was widely lauded in the centre of the universe for telling the assembled media: “The challenge here in Toronto is not to come up with the plan. The challenge in Toronto is to stick to it. That’s the hard part,” it might be instructive to examine MacTavish’s post-season address in a similar light.
Because MacTavish’s main message remains what it has been all along during his twoyear tenure as GM: the Oilers will remain loyal to their gifted, young core of Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Schultz and Nail Yakupov, he of the freshly signed two-year contract extension (two years, with an average annual value of $2.5 million).
The Oilers will double down (or is it triple- or quadruple-down?) on drafting and developing, having installed Bob Green as director of player development, to work with head scout Stu MacGregor and Scott Howson, the senior vice-president of hockey operations, on the amateur draft.
On MacTavish’s watch, the Oilers are going to improve internally and incrementally. There’s no doubt about MacTavish’s passionate belief in the team’s young core players.
When a TV reporter asked whether exposing rookie defenceman Oscar Klefbom to top two minutes might not hurt his development, MacTavish delivered a spirited defence of the 21-year-old.
“I don’t think there is one facet of his game where you can put him in (a tough situation) and hurt his development,” MacTavish said, with conviction.
In a similar vein, MacTavish, as he has for months, strongly suggested both Darnell Nurse and Leon Draisaitl might begin next season with the Oilers’ American Hockey League farm club in Bakersfield, Calif.
“They’re going to determine their level,” MacTavish said, adding, “There is nothing wrong with going to the American Hockey League.”
Tellingly, given the heavy emphasis on the individual and collective development of his team, the passion MacTavish expressed for Klefbom modulated to a more clinical tone when he was asked about the future of interim head coach Todd Nelson.
Many, if not most, of the current Oilers have lauded the work of Nelson, and that included Yakupov, who spoke to that in his session with reporters Monday.
MacTavish duly noted Nelson’s excellent work with the club, qualifying it by noting he had the benefit of deploying players such as Derek Roy, Rob Klinkhammer and the improving Anton Lander, who were added to the mix after Dallas Eakins was fired.
But since MacTavish has been economical with his praise for Nelson all along, it seems reasonable to deduce that the affable coach’s best chance to be the head man next season may be if the GM cannot recruit the more experienced hand he says he is going to cast a net (“It’s not going to be a wide net”) for. There’s logic in that. The last three Oilers head coaches — Nelson, Eakins and Ralph Krueger — all were NHL first-timers in that role.
It’s believed MacTavish has had his leash yanked on that file, his instructions to secure an established NHL head coach.
We’ll see. The good-cop-bad-cop chemistry of an established head coach whose mandate would be to goose up the team’s battle level, while Nelson, his assistant or associate, focuses on, say, skill development, could be mighty effective. If that’s the plan, and Nelson is prepared to buy into it, that is.
MacTavish likened the development process to investing money in the bank — short-term pain leading to long-term gain, in effect.
It’s impossible to doubt MacTavish believes his plan will pay off, in the end. But the fans already have been waiting nine years — nine, not seven — to cash those bonds.
Can they hack it being 10 years? Because MacTavish, who also rates high on being candid, also said this: “Next year, I would forecast as another developmental year.”
Oh, baby. jmackinnon@edmontonjournal.com Twitter: @rjmackinnon