The hard work now begins for Oilers
NEW COACH: Todd McLellan will begin by forging a bond with players and get them to buy into his system
EDMONTON — It’s hard to believe it’s not even June and this is already the sixth best summer in Edmonton Oilers history.
Short of the five times they paraded a Stanley Cup down Jasper Avenue, the organization has never generated more excitement, optimism and love than it has with its tidal wave of change over the last three weeks.
That some of it is dumb luck and some of it long overdue matters not to a fan base starving for hope. They have it and that’s all that matters.
The Oilers have a top boss who appears to mean business in Bob Nicholson.
They have a general manager who has been a successful GM in the NHL in Peter Chiarelli.
They stumbled into a game-changing talent who is already being compared to Sidney Crosby — or better — when they won the draft lottery.
And now they have a proven head coach with experience and a glowing record, who many believe is the perfect fit for the Oilers dressing room.
“It’s an exciting time for all of us,” Todd McLellan said Tuesday during his first official day as the new bench boss.
“But the product on the ice, the wins and losses, still drive the organization. We have to make sure that those players are driving it upwards. There will be hills and valleys, but over time it has to keep going upward.”
Announcements and news conferences are the easy part. Now comes the only part that matters: Making the Oilers a better team.
“Today will probably be our easiest day,” McLellan said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. We’ll have some good days ahead of us, but they won’t all be great. There will be painful days ahead for all of us. We know that.”
As McLellan knows from years of coaching against the Oilers, this is a team that has many problems — more problems than teen phenom Connor McDavid alone can fix.
Asked what he saw in the Oilers from the opposing bench, McLellan described a team with enough speed and firepower to light up a scoreboard, but one that would also bail out if you leaned on it hard enough.
“They scared you because they could beat you 7-2 on any given night. And there were games where if you could get off to a good start, you could push them out of the games and get to the mental aspect of them not being in it for the whole night. That’s something we’ll have to change.”
How does he get them to do what so many other coaches before him couldn’t? Every coach said he wanted them to play harder on the puck, but only Todd Nelson — who finished the 2014-15 season after Dallas Eakins was fired — made inroads.
“There are going to be games where it’s not going your way, but you’re not out of it,” McLellan said. “You have to fight through it and keep going.
“They haven’t had a lot of success, so you have to find another way to build that mental strength and that comes before the games are even played. That comes in practice and in meetings and being good teammates. So we have some things to work on.”
It starts with forging a bond between the players and with the players, he said. Getting them to buy in is the only way this can work.
“The how part is one thing, the why part is most important,” McLellan said. “If they understand why they’re doing things, why they have to sacrifice and what the rewards are, they’ll often get it done. You have to create a trusting environment, an environment where the players know you can help them and are willing to help them, but also hold them accountable in the right way.
“We have to charter a path, we have to determine what we want to be and how we want to look. This is every day. This is not picking and choosing when you want to do it right, it’s doing it right all the time.”