John Shannon

Thanks.

Well, what really has happened, I think, across the country is that we're now at a point in the hockey season where there are less Canadian teams involved, so the focus gets away from the Stanley Cup playoffs.

and goes back to the teams that people are in distress about, whether it be the Leafs, the Canucks or the Oilers.

And so, you know, the guys in Edmonton are following the news in Edmonton.

And I think that that's exactly what's happening.

And there's a lot of focus, as there was in Vancouver, with the announcement that will probably come tomorrow.

But there's a lot of focus on what the Oilers have to do, particularly after Stan's comments and Connor and Leon's comments.

And you're going to have to deal with them somehow.

particularly Bob with an owner who wants to win as badly as any Oiler fan has ever had.

Absolutely.

You know, and you look at Paul McFarland who came in and I know of Paul McFarland's work quite a bit from his time in junior hockey and in other NHL teams, but you had to worry whether Paul McFarland was a lot like Chris Knobloch.

And when you have a coaching staff, you need different voices from different angles.

And I think that I really do think that's what Paul and Glenn both offered to Chris the last couple of years.

And I think it was important to be part of that.

So you do wonder about that.

At the same time, how much loyalty is there to a guy that took your team to two Stanley Cup finals, didn't win them, but two Stanley Cup finals.

and still got the team to the playoffs this year with the results that weren't expected.

The caveat in all this, Bob, is, and you know this, this team has to be good for two more years for sure, really good for two more years to try to guarantee that Connor McDavid stays long-term.

No, and we've gone eight or nine minutes without talking about goaltending and the deals that were done on goaltending.

And that's fair.