BOTH GENERAL MANAGERS HAPPY WITH OILERS’ START
The new general manager of the Edmonton Oilers came to work Thursday excited and enthused about his hockey club.
“What’s it like to be GM of a 6-1 team?” he was asked at a special media gathering.
“Obviously it’s great. We’re off to a very good start. We’re one of the top teams in the league right now. Hopefully we can keep this up for the whole season,” Owen Mcgonigal said.
Owen Mcgonigal?
It probably didn’t make the NHL transactions wire, but Mcgonigal is a 15-year-old
Grade 10 kid in a seriously souped-up wheelchair who made a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive application to the Make-a-wish Foundation explaining how he was determined to battle against the odds to survive like he has so far and to realize his dream of becoming an NHL general manager.
Originally one of the Edmonton Stollery Hospital kids — despite moving with his mom Angela and dad Kevin to London, Ont. to be close to the leading specialist in Canada as he battles a form of muscular dystrophy — Owen was given his wish Thursday and found himself as GM of the Oilers.
The family billets London Knights players and one, Robert Thomas, won the Stanley Cup last year with the St. Louis Blues. He gave Owen a chance to hold the Cup.
“I really had to fight hard to keep my emotions in check today,” his mom said of Owen’s signing as Oilers GM.
Actual Oilers general manager Ken Holland, who also signed Addison Hubick, Jake Rock, Benjamin Woodlock, Blake Arenault and Owen Grabas to player contracts, was impressed with his replacement as GM, who showed up wearing a suit for the occasion.
“I was talking to his dad and he told me he wants to be in the business. I’m looking forward to spending a few hours together,” Holland said.
“We’ll go from here to watch practice together, show him around a bit and sit down, meet some of the players and do some talking about the job and go with the others to have a little bit of a pizza party before their contracts all expire later in the afternoon.”
Holland said he planned to tell the young man how he didn’t think for a minute about one day becoming an NHL GM when he was 15.
“I wanted to be an NHL goalie.
That didn’t work out, so I went to Plan B,” said the former Medicine Hat Tiger who played nine years pro, but only four games between the pipes in the NHL.
Like his temporary replacement, Holland is happy with his 6-1 team.
“We’re thrilled with the start, but there’s a long way to go. It’s a great start. I’m happy we have 12 points banked away,” Holland said.
Young Mcgonigal should know that being 6-1 and having a roster coming to compete every day makes everything work in Ken Holland’s world.
The key to this season is to be in the playoff picture while the talent is being developed in the system.
“In Detroit, that’s what I always did and the Red Wings were always competitive. The players in the minors weren’t thinking about Detroit because the Red Wings’ record was good,” Holland said.
“They knew they were there to build a resume to get to the next step. Our players in Bakersfield have to know they have stock in the franchise and that they have to focus on building their resume and earn the jersey and when they get here, take somebody’s job.
“So, I’m thrilled to be 6-1 but there are 75 more (games) to go — and I wake up every day and I’m nervous. I’m nervous about the next game with the Red Wings rolling into town.”
Holland will return to his post Friday morning in time, after the better part of four decades and winning four Stanley Cups, to sit in the press box and go through the excruciating experience of watching his new team go against “his” Detroit Red Wings now managed by protege Steve Yzerman.
“It’s going to be surreal for me. I’d been a Red Wing for 36 years. I had the Red Wings jersey on for a couple years as a player. I know all those players. I’ve watched them grow from 18-year-old
Red Wing draft picks to players. Yzerman and I go back to 1994. I talked to Steve quite a bit in the summer, but haven’t talked to him since training camp. It’s going to be strange to see the Red Wings on the ice and me rooting hard against them,” Holland said.
“I’ll still be cheering for Detroit for 80 games. But there will be two games in the next two weeks I’ll be rooting hard against them.”
The Oilers are in Detroit a week Tuesday, Columbus on Halloween and Pittsburgh on the Saturday.
The separation won’t be complete until that visit, not just to be the GM of the visiting team in Motor City but because it’s then he and his wife will complete the process of moving out of their house and into a condo in the
J.W. Marriott skyscraper complex attached to Rogers Place.
“We can’t move into it for six or seven weeks yet,” Holland said, “so my wife and I are living here out of suitcases right now. But I’m looking forward to it. Down the elevator. Across the bridge. Into the office. Four or five minutes.”