MacTavish departs Oilers, heads to Russia to conduct Lokomotiv
Before Craig MacTavish took this flight of fancy to go back to full-time coaching in Russia, he did his homework and perhaps got on the blower to Dave King, who knows all about Lokomotiv Yaroslavl.
King, who started the exodus of Canadian coaches to the KHL — Mike Keenan, Bob Hartley, Sean Simpson, Paul Gardner — by taking a job in the steel city of Magnitogorsk in 2005, twice coached Lokomotiv, the team that had to be rebuilt after a devastating plane crash in 2011.
“That tragedy really affected that city,” King said in a conversation a few years ago.
“There’s a huge monument in front of the rink to honour those players and there’s pictures of all the players on both sides of the building, and also another monument inside the (9,000-seat) arena. That city is really wrapped around that.”
Yaroslavl, a city of 600,000, is 250 km northeast of Moscow. It’s where Vladimir Tarasenko was born, as well as ex-Oilers player Denis Grebeshkov.
MacTavish, who was senior vice-president of player operations — Peter Chiarelli’s righthand man in charge of the Oilers’ farm team — was on a plane to Europe Thursday after exit interviews with players and the coaching staff in Bakersfield. He wasn’t available to talk about the two-year KHL deal with Lokomotiv to replace fired former NHL winger Dmitri Kvartalnov, but MacTavish’s former teammate and former Oilers assistant coach Craig Simpson said: “Obviously this is a dramatic change from the NHL, but he loves challenges and he loves coaching.
“I wouldn’t think anything Craig did was a snap judgment. He could have talked with Mike Keenan (MacTavish’s former coach with the New York Rangers). I know Craig’s calm in that (coaching) position,” added Simpson, Hockey Night in Canada’s main colour commentator, who was with MacTavish on the 2006 Oilers team that got to the Stanley Cup final.
MacTavish, 60, was Oilers head coach for eight seasons then got burned out in 2009 and worked on his master’s in business. He had a five-game stint behind the Oilers bench in 2014 with Todd Nelson after MacTavish, then GM, fired Dallas Eakins. His last full-time coaching gig was with the AHL Chicago Wolves, then Vancouver’s farm squad, in 2011-12. He was also head coach of Canada’s world championship team in 2010.
With Ken Holland coming in as GM on May 7, he was having sit-downs with plenty of people, including MacTavish.
“We talked last Thursday in Bakersfield for about two hours and Craig said he had something of interest and thought he would be moving on,” Holland said. “He didn’t tell me what it was. We didn’t have the opportunity to talk about his role with the Edmonton Oilers, but this other offer was in the hopper for a while before I got here.
“Then two or three days ago, I found out he was going to be a coach in the KHL. I know he’s excited with the opportunity to be a head coach again, and Russian training camps open in July.”
Holland said he hadn’t made up his mind on whether to keep MacTavish, but even if he’s moving on to Russia, he was still in the team’s pro scouting meetings on Monday to offer his side on Bakersfield.
“I’ve come in (to the Oilers job) with an open mind. It’s not like I’ve got 40 people out there I’m waiting to bring in. That doesn’t exist in professional hockey. I’ve known Craig for a long, long time and any time there’s change people want to sit down and talk. That’s the way I do business,” said Holland.
The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, like many in the KHL, changes coaches a lot. In the past few years, they’ve had Gardner, Alexei Kudashov, King, Simpson, Kvartalnov, and now MacTavish. They’ve been bouncing between Canadian and Russian head coaches.
“Craig’s a really good teacher. Coaching in the KHL is a lot like coaching in college or the AHL level with lots of time to teach in practice — there’s no restrictions on how much you practise over there,” said former Oilers head coach Ken Hitchcock. “Craig will probably have to get an assistant coach, maybe a former player, who speaks Russian and English.”
King, the former head coach of the ’84, ’88 and ’92 Canadian Olympic teams and head coach of the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets, was a hero in Yaroslavl when they knocked off mighty SKA St. Petersburg with Ilya Kovalchuk in the 2014 KHL playoffs. Then he rushed back the next season to replace Sean Simpson, who was fired after nine league games.
“They have high expectations for Canadian coaches in Russia,” said King, a member of both the IIHF Hall of Fame and the Order of Canada.
“Do things the Canadian way. We think the Canada-Russia rivalry is great on that side of the table; it’s just as big over here.”