The Edmonton Oilers got their man. Todd McLellan was officially introduced as the next head coach of the club. He will be the seventh head coach to get a crack behind the bench since Edmonton reached the Stanley Cup Final in 2006.
Instead of going after Mike Babcock, widely considered the top coach on the market, the club set their sights on McLellan instead and as a result, succeeded in recruiting their first choice.
McLellan joins the team in the midst of a rebuild. However, in the wake of the team winning the draft lottery and the opportunity to pick Connor McDavid first overall, it almost seems like this is the ground floor of something completely different. Adding McDavid to group that includes three first-overall picks and a litany of young players on the roster and in the system suggests that things could be different.
Nabbing an experienced head coach like McLellan, who spent the last seven years guiding the San Jose Sharks, is a statement that the club is ready to break out of its rebuilding mode and launch into honestly competing for a playoff spot and further down the road, the Stanley Cup.
It’s not just McLellan’s NHL experience that is important here, however. He has a long history as a head coach at the American Hockey League and Western Hockey League levels, which grants him important experience as a developer of talent. Despite only playing in just five NHL games himself, McLellan has a long history as a coach dating back more than 20 years. That's pretty robust experience for a coach that is just 47 years old.
McLellan worked his way up through the ranks before getting his NHL break as an assistant coach for three seasons with the Detroit Red Wings under head coach Mike Babcock.
After helping the Wings win the Stanley Cup in 2008, McLellan moved onto the Sharks, where he posted a 311-153-66 record over 540 games. The Sharks repeatedly stumbled in the postseason, however, reaching the Western Conference Final once in six trips to the Stanley Cup Playoffs under McLellan. The club missed the postseason for the first time since 2003 last year with a 40-33-9 record.
Following the disappointing campaign, McLellan and the Sharks mutually agreed to part ways.
The Oilers had an opening, though Todd Nelson had been holding the job as the interim head coach. The club interviewed Nelson, but with a restructured front office, it seemed as though the Oilers had different plans. McLellan could choose to keep him on staff as an assistant, if Nelson wants that. However, the two haven't met yet according to McLellan.
By joining the Oilers, the Melville, Saskatchewan, native returns to Western Canada. He will be challenged by the roster the Oilers will have next year, whether McDavid makes the seamless transition everyone expects him to or not. There is still a long way to go for a club that hasn’t seen the playoffs in nearly a decade.
McLellan has to wade through all of the muck that consistently losing brings. Perhaps he got a head start by working with two of the club’s most important stars in Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall, two of the Oilers’ most important forwards over the last several seasons. McLellan received rave reviews from the pair after he helped lead them and Team Canada to the gold medal at the World Championship, which just wrapped up Sunday.
There is a culture change afoot in Edmonton. It starts as the top, with former Hockey Canada exec Bob Nicholson overseeing the entire organization. He wasted no time in bringing in a president and general manager with a Stanley Cup on his resume in Peter Chiarelli. Both of these individuals are from outside of the “glory days” bubble that had consumed the front office led by Kevin Lowe. Most recent GM Craig MacTavish was also pushed to a diminished role.
What had been going on in Edmonton hadn’t been working, as was plainly obvious to everyone. With a new front office and a new coaching staff, perhaps it will make a difference in the on-ice product.
The hiring of McLellan can’t be where it stops though, and it almost certainly won't. Chiarelli is going to have to make some decisions about the lineup and how it can improve. There are glaring holes at the goaltending position and on defense, but really the entire roster needs work.
One thing Chiarelli will have to consider is how many young players is too many? Or if that’s even a concern at all. The team has been bad enough to be afforded many high first-round draft picks, which means their talent under the age of 25 is pretty immense at this point.
There’s the aforementioned Hall and Eberle. Then you add in Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov, Leon Draisaitl, Darnell Nurse and of course McDavid, and there’s a great base to start from.
The Oilers have failed in the past to surround their young core with veteran players that can contribute in a significant enough way to limit the amount of weight the younger guys have to carry.
The suffering will all have been worth it if Chiarelli and McLellan can turn this team into a perennial contender. A lot of the pieces are already in place, they just have to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors and not screw this up.
