Bob Stauffer

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Welcome, everybody.

This is Bob Stauffer in the 880 Ched Studios, the city's sell side, and this is Oilers Now.

It's been an interesting day.

If you have not heard, we're going to get to some of that fairly quickly.

Earlier today,

The National Hockey League issued the following statement.

The league has completed its review of Mike Babcock's tenure in Columbus and of certain alleged conduct associated therewith.

Our investigation has concluded that even in a light least favorable to Mr. Babcock, there is no current basis to restrict his employment in the league.

The NHLPA...

also put out a release today.

While we found the allegation of Mike Babcock's conduct as the Columbus Blue Jackets head coach very concerning, the league has decided that there's no current basis on which to restrict his employment.

Moving forward, we expect Mr. Babcock will uphold the high standards required of NHL head coaches.

A week ago Monday, when the story broke that the Edmonton Oilers were looking at Mike Babcock, and if you listened to this show over the course of the last five weeks, dating back to when Chris Knobloch was relieved, along with Mark Stewart, of his duties, we consistently mentioned Babcock as a viable option, especially in light of the fact that there was a prevailing sense out there

that no one was sure of the contract status of Bruce Cassidy in Boston.

And we talked about the potential of coaches, i.e.

Cassidy, Peter Laviolette, Daryl Sutter, Craig Berube.

to name a few, maybe even Barry Trotz.

But we constantly mentioned Babcock.

I actually had people in this market say, how dare anybody mention Mike Babcock as a potential candidate?