“I built the team”: Heat squarely on Oilers GM Holland after Tippett firing

Feb 10 2022, 10:37 pm

The Edmonton Oilers, namely general manager Ken Holland, made a significant move Thursday in the hopes of preserving the potential of an appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

Relieving coach Dave Tippett and assistant Jim Playfair of duties earlier in the day, Holland stepped to the microphone in front of media in Edmonton and put the weight of the struggling organization directly on his shoulders. 

“It’s been up and down like a toilet seat, really. Stretches where we’ve played pretty good and then we don’t play good,” Holland said.

“It feels like you’re chasing the game. We’ve been chasing the game for like two months. I can’t tell you it’s coaching. Obviously, I’m here to change the coach, but again, I built the team. If the team’s not good enough, that’s on me. But certainly, as we’re sitting here today, I felt that I needed to do something to see if we could get a different result, and a better result. Now we watch.

The Oilers awoke in the morning on the outside looking in, trailing the provincial foe Calgary Flames by five points for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference.

It’s stark contrast from the team that ranked first in the NHL in winning percentage at .762 just over two months ago.

From first to not-quite-worst.

A 2-11-2 run through December and into January, followed by a pair of lifeless losses at home coming out of the All-Star break, prompted the drastic move. 

But it didn’t absolve Holland of wrongdoing, he admitted.

“I just think it’s a gut feel,” Holland said, a phrase repeated often through the 40-minute presser. “I’ve been around the National Hockey League and around teams a long time. At the end of the day I built the team. I take full responsibility where we’re at. Certainly Jim and Tipp lost their job today.

“But there’s a general manager and all the people that I’ve hired that have come to this today. It’s a tough day. It’s a gut feel that I needed to make a change.”

It’s about the only change Holland could make. The Oilers are strapped for cap space to address more pressing player personnel issues. 

Edmonton has just five digits to work with when it comes to available space, according to CapFriendly.

And roughly $50,000 isn’t a lot of wiggle room for a mistake. Or any move, for that matter.

No trade pending to help take the pressure off the oft-struggling goaltending duo of Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen. No deal that’ll help deepen a thin defence.

“Obviously when we went out and we signed Evander Kane last week and Smitty came off of [long-term injury], we made some roster moves to pare money down,” Holland said. “We’re in a cap world. We’re dollar in, dollar out. It’s not like we’re just going to add players.

“If we want to add $2 million, we’ve got to move $2 million. I think probably 20 to 25 teams in the league are in a similar boat. We’ll see. 

“The solution probably has to be in the room at this stage of the game.”

There. And behind the bench, it turns out.

But it’s a situation of Holland’s doing. 

After all, it’s the team he built around two of the game’s undisputed bests in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

But Jay Woodcroft, Tippett’s replacement, will be the dynamic duo’s fourth head coach in seven years. Woodcroft will be centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ eighth coach in 10 seasons, too.

Is swapping out the voice the answer?

“A lot of thought to that,” Holland said. “That’s why I was there a month ago and said I didn’t want to change coaches. I believe in stability. Again, at the end of the day…it’s just a gut feel. I just felt that I need to make a change.

“Today’s a tough day. Today’s a tough day for me for a whole lot of reasons. You’re letting people go that have passion, that have worked hard, they’re good hockey people that care and we’ve had good success under them up until about the first of December. I was trying to bring that stability.”

Holland wasn’t able to. 

Not with the clock ticking.

“Today is about my instincts, my experience telling me that there’s 38 games to go,” he said. “We still control our own fate. There’s big games ahead. 

“If I waited 10 more games and we kept going it might be too late, so I’m hoping and believing that what I did today is going to have an impact, a positive impact, to get us to turn the corner.”

It best. 

Otherwise Holland himself could join Tippett and Playfair on the sidelines.

Watching an inconsistent Oilers club from afar, instead of being tasked to fix it.

“Put me in that group. I built the team,” he owned. 

“I think that obviously it’s probably why we’re here today, right? The wild swings. You want to play consistently. I think if I had the answer or anybody had the answer, we wouldn’t be having those wild swings. I think there’s things involved in that. I think we had a stretch there where anything that could go wrong did go wrong. That’s party because of the reason why I made the move today.

“I just felt I needed to make a move. We still control our own fate, but we’ve got to get cracking here and start winning some games.”

Aaron VickersAaron Vickers

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