Kris Knoblauch has been interviewing coaches for the past two weeks to fill four vacancies on his staff.
Glen Gulutzan and Paul Coffey won’t be on the bench next year, while goalie coach Dustin Schwartz and skating and skills coach David Pelletier were not re-signed. I expect the Oilers to announce their new staff this week.
What will Knoblauch be looking for? I asked Craig MacTavish, who was an NHL assistant coach in St. Louis and New York and the head coach in Edmonton, his thoughts on the topic.
Do you think it’s a must to have one assistant coach who used to be an NHL head coach?
MacTavish: I wouldn’t say it’s a must. You could also be looking for the next Spencer Carbery. That’d be good to find if there’s somebody out there who fits that bill. I think looking for that young, up-and-coming coach would be great. It’s important to have another experienced coach on your staff, whether they were an NHL head coach or a head coach in the AHL, they know the pressure of being the head coach. It can help, but I’m not sure it’s a must.
What will be Knoblauch’s biggest challenge in the hiring process?
MacTavish: I think the guy they’re really going to miss is Gully (Gulutzan). I wouldn’t want to be coming in here following that power play act (laughs). And you have to manage the stars. Everybody thinks it’s easy, but it’s not that easy. Those guys are really demanding. They don’t suffer fools very well, and they want competence immediately. And if there’s any hint of incompetence, then you have a huge problem. It’ll be interesting who they bring in to do that (power play). That’s going to be somebody with a lot of experience, I would guess.
What would you look for in a goalie coach?
MacTavish: When I evaluate the quality of a goalie coach, it’s when a goalie struggles and then he takes him out of the loop for a week and has to get him ready for his next start. I thought, Schwartzy (Dustin Schwartz) was really good at that. But you know, as a coach, you’re left to the performance level of your players in a lot of instances. And, you know, maybe a different voice for Stewie (Stuart Skinner) will help.
David Alexander was really good in St. Louis. And he was really on top of all the technical, analytical stuff. He would evaluate every goal that was scored in the league. I mean, that’s kind of where the position has evolved to. The goalie coach is part Analytics Guy and part Brain Manager.
Another guy who is great is Sean Burke. He just gets it. He was with us at the World Championship. Man, he did such a good job putting our team together. Those are two of the guys I know. I don’t know many of them.
But then I put Schwartzy up in that category as well. I mean, to withstand and survive all the coaching changes here you have to be pretty well respected and pretty good at your job. Coaching, a lot of the time you’re defined by your shortcomings, not what you do well. That’s taken for granted. You are defined by the struggles and the challenges that you have, whether you’re the goalie coach or the defense coach or the head coach. It’s all defined by the struggles and the problems, not by the solutions.
I understand what they’re doing and giving Stewie another chance. He’s a 26-year-old goalie who’s been to the Stanley Cup Final a couple years in a row. Yes, at times he looks porous, but he’s also had great stretches of games and there is enough there to make a change and give a new voice a chance before changing the goalie.
MacT’s last response about how coaches are often defined solely by their shortcomings and problems, while overlooking what they do well, and their success, is very true. I’d add that it’s often the same with players. Mistakes are magnified tenfold compared to good plays.
My understanding is that Mark Stuart will oversee the defence, replacing Coffey. With that in mind, Knoblauch won’t be hiring a defence coach. The coaches all work together and share their input on the forwards, defence, penalty kill and powerplay, but he still likes to have one person directly responsible for the power play and the penalty kill.
They need a new PP coach, and I’m not sure if the other assistant coach will oversee the PK or work in tandem with Stuart. The PK struggled last year, but it was historically good in 2024. As MacTavish mentioned, you can’t just look at last year’s PK to evaluate Stuart. It would be foolish to overlook the success he had in 2024. I think the Oilers losing Cody Ceci and Vincent Desharnais and being without Mattias Ekholm for multiple months played a huge role in the PK struggling as much as it did in the 2025 playoffs.
The new coaches have lots of talent to work with. Edmonton is a very good team, and new ideas and new voices could help. Of course, there will be high expectations, but every coach would rather have high expectations and a winning roster than the alternative.
Look for the coaching staff to be announced this week.
