Since Connor McDavid was drafted first overall in 2015, the Oilers have now cycled through six head coaches. It started with Todd McLellan, Ken Hitchcock, Dave Tippett, Jay Woodcroft, Kris Knoblauch and now Mike Babcock. The average tenure of an Edmonton head coach over the last 17 seasons works out to roughly 132 regular season games.
The hiring of Babcock this summer came with the usual questions that follow every Oilers coaching change. Was the right person chosen, and was the process actually thorough? Those questions got a lot more pointed after veteran sports broadcaster Rod Pedersen offered his take on how the search went and what difference biding a little more time could have made in terms of landing their preferred candidate.
Oilers could have landed Bruce Cassidy ‘had they waited a week’
When the Oilers began their coaching search this summer, the name they kept circling back to was Bruce Cassidy. Cassidy had just been fired by the Vegas Golden Knights with eight games left in the regular season. This was despite having won the Stanley Cup with the franchise in 2023 and building a strong coaching reputation across his career in Washington, Boston and Vegas.
Edmonton asked Vegas for permission to interview him. Vegas declined. Cassidy was still under contract, and his deal included a standard non-compete clause that prevented him from talking to other teams without the Golden Knights’ explicit permission. With Vegas in the middle of their own Stanley Cup run under replacement coach John Tortorella, McCrimmon had no obvious reason to do Edmonton any favours, and being a division rival made it even less likely.
The Oilers, having hit that wall with Vegas, pivoted. And that pivot is what Rod Pedersen took issue with when he spoke on the Bleed Oil Blue Podcast last week.
“I think Bruce Cassidy would have been a better fit, and had they waited a week, they would have had him,” he said.
When pressed on whether that was informed or speculative, Pedersen pointed to conversations he had been having with people around the league: “That’s what I think. And I’ve talked to the agents, and they’re all like, that’s exactly what happened.”
Stan Bowman and ownership question
Pedersen also spoke about how this hire came together internally. He suggested that the decision was not purely driven by GM Stan Bowman, and that ownership, specifically Kate Goodman, played a significant role in landing on Babcock.
“Kate stepped in, this was his hire, but Mike has the credentials,” he said.
Beyond the process question, Pedersen raised something about Babcock’s current reputation that is harder to dismiss and he mentioned what he hears even now, regularly, from active players.
“To me, Mike’s not a bad guy, but every time he comes on my show, my phone blows up with players that hate him.”
Was the coaching hire rushed?
It surely does not mean the Oilers feel the same way as McDavid, Draisaitl and Zach Hyman have all offered public support for the hire, and every team is its own environment. But it does draw attention to the conversation about whether Babcock was truly the best available fit, or whether he was simply the most accessible option once the Cassidy avenue closed.
There is also a reasonable case that the Cassidy door was never going to open for Edmonton regardless of timing. Vegas GM Kelly McCrimmon was visibly annoyed when the Oilers’ interest in Cassidy became public, and he made his position clear.
So the real question is not necessarily whether the Oilers should have waited longer, but whether they had fully explored every other option available before arriving at Babcock. And from the looks of things, it seems the Babcock hire was indeed rushed.
Babcock’s job
The Oilers have a two-year window with McDavid locked in, and ownership clearly wants to use every bit of it. The urgency around this hire was warranted. But thoroughness, or lack thereof, in the history of coaching decisions in Edmonton suggests the organization has sometimes let the former override the latter.
Well, Babcock can make all of this irrelevant with a strong season and a deep playoff run. And in Edmonton, we are only one season removed from Knoblauch’s back-to-back Stanley Cup Final runs, so the Cup is the ceiling.
