Another NHL team decided to make a coaching change after a bad start of 2018-19 season. Edmonton Oilers announced on Tuesday that they had parted ways with Todd McLellan after the team lost six out of their last seven games and will replace him with Ken Hitchcock.
“With all the parity in the League, I think the timing was right now to do it,” – said Oilers’ general manager Peter Chiarelli. “These are difficult decisions and you’ve seen a number of GMs in the same position speak, and you’ll probably hear me say the same things but there’s still a lot of runways left in the year. I’m not absolving myself of any responsibility on the player personnel. This isn’t an indictment of Todd or the players. This is a collective thing. It’s our job to get to the playoffs. We owe it to our fans and I felt this was the right move for it.“
Todd McLellan joined the Oilers in 2015 and was tasked to leading the team through the rebuilding phase. In three full seasons he spent with Edmonton, the 51-year-old posted 114-114-23 record and led the franchise to a playoff appearance once. Todd McLellan leaves Oilers on the sixth place in the Pacific Division with 9-10-1 record.
Edmonton Oilers hope that Ken Hitchcock, who is ranked third all-time in wins in NHL history and has one Stanley Cup, will be able to turn things around for the franchise moving forward. Hitchcock most recently served with the Dallas Stars.
“I had the experience of working with Ken in Sochi,” – said Chiarelli. “I got to know him fairly well in that short period of time. His track record is impeccable. He’s a very good tactician. What I saw was a real high level of input in a short period of time. You can extrapolate that a little bit here. We’re two months in and we don’t have a full season left. He knows how to inject system structure and execution in a short period of time. He’s well-respected, a taskmaster and he’s got a lot to his portfolio and I felt he was the right person for the job.“
