Stoff

Just to say the least, Stan Bowman's doing his availability right now, guys.

You know, and there's a lot to unpack here during the course of the season.

There's no other way to say it.

It was an underwhelming year.

I think that it's entirely possible that Chris Knobloch was the right guy at the right time when he came in in November of 23.

He settled things down.

He was relaxed.

He had a tremendous assistant coach by the name of Glenn Gullinson that was experienced, that had a long history with Connor McDavid and Leon Dreissel, that helped him out with the nuances of being an NHL head coach.

And then he had a dynamic force come in with him in Paul Coffey, who's old school.

You know, he's not a guy that's going to sit there and pull out the iPad on the bench, but he knows how to breed confidence in players.

And I think that that tandem certainly helped Chris.

And if you look at the 23-24 and 24-25 seasons, they were completely different than this year.

You know, in 23-24, Edmonton went 24-3 during one stretch, an eight-game winning streak and a 16-game winning streak.

People forget last year in 24-25, from November the 9th until the Four Nations face-off, for three months, the Oilers had the best record in the NHL.

Okay?

They didn't come close to anything like that with a new staff this year.

They didn't have one three-game winning streak until March.

Got a five-game winning streak late in the year.

Got injured in the playoffs.

Regressed in several areas.