The Edmonton Oilers are in need of a new head coach.
The club confirmed Thursday morning it had canned 47-year-old Kris Knoblauch, who took the reins in 2023-24 after Jay Woodcroft was fired.
The Oilers on Thursday also fired assistant coach Mark Stuart, who was hired the year before Knoblauch.
Stan Bowman, executive vice-president of hockey operations and general manager, said both decisions were made after a thorough review of the 2025-26 season, the first in three years Edmonton did not make it to the Stanley Cup Final.
“When Kris came into the Oilers, he was the perfect coach at that time. He’s exactly what the group needed to take them to almost the Stanley Cup.… But as time passess, things change. Things change for the coach themselves, but the players change,” Bowman told reporters.
“What worked one year or a couple years, if it doesn’t continue to work – then that’s where we are in the results business,” he continued.
Edmonton was eliminated by the Anaheim Ducks in the first round of the playoffs this year.
Bowman denied that any single factor or person is to blame.
“We have a team where we had players that didn’t perform to the level they should. We had players that I brought in that didn’t perform to the level that we expected them to, so that’s on myself,” he said.
“There was the discussion of where are we at now? And do we have the belief that maybe a different voice would be able to tap into the players that we have to a different degree and get us to another level?”
Knoblauch has a 135-77-21 record in 233 regular season games, and a 31-22 record in three playoff runs.
Rumoured Cassidy courting may have been a factor
Speculation that the Oilers wanted to speak to former Vegas Golden Knights head Coach Bruce Cassidy may have forced the club’s hand, TSN’s Ryan Rishaug says.
“I have a feeling that there’s a chance the Oilers were looking into Bruce Cassidy as an option to replace Knoblauch, but if they couldn’t get him, they would have stayed with Kris Knoblauch. And maybe they were trying to do that quietly, but the fact that it leaked out had this whole thing blow up, it’s impossible for Knoblauch to stay on,” Rishaug told CTV News Edmonton.
“The alternative is they knew all along they were firing Knoblauch and went and approached Cassidy anyways, which would be an entirely disrespectful way of going about it.”
Bowman refused to verify the Cassidy rumours.
He said he met Knoblauch to deliver the news Wednesday evening, a timing that came down to “logistics.”
“That’s unfortunate, but there was certainly no disrespect intended. We did a long review and we didn’t come to this decision until very recently.”
Cassidy was fired in March with eight games left to the Golden Knights’ regular season. He has one year left on his contract.
What’s in a new Oilers head coach?
Bowman said the club would be conducting a “wide search” for Knoblauch’s replacement. He did not provide a timeline.
Looking back on this season, he acknowledged the Oilers failed to play anything except the power play consistently well.
He said the team needed to lock down its “process” in order to achieve the result: winning the Stanley Cup.
“When (the players) have shown they can do it, but they don’t always do it, then the question is how can we get there? You could say just change up the players…. But the other approach is you can find a coach that can get the most out of those guys. And I think that’s what we’re looking for,” Bowman said.
Although he said some players’ roles this year “maybe weren’t what they should have been,” he did not call that a big issue between Oilers management and Knoblauch.
“At the end of the day, the coach has to do what he believes is best and then from there, the results are judged.”
Knoblauch, who signed a three-year $7.5-million contract extension last year, was the Oilers’ sixth head coach in 12 years.
“Whoever we choose to come in here, you’re hoping it can be a long relationship, and that’s the goal because stability is a good thing. But you have to react to where we are today,” Bowman said.
With files from TSN and CTV News Edmonton’s Nahreman Issa
