With the turmoil and concern facing some teams in the NHL it came as a shock to hear that the Edmonton Oilers released GM Steve Tambellini of his job.
Steve has done a great job given what he took over when he first landed in that position and some say this will come back to “bite them” and they should have let Steve finish the season out. The Edmonton Oilers comment to the press was “the window of opportunity is short with their young guns and that Tambellini wasn’t getting it done.” Tambellini (in his fifth season as GM) was replaced by former Oiler coach and Vice-President Craig MacTavish.
MacTavish was the Oilers coach from 2001 to 2008, then left hockey to acquire an MBA at Queen’s University. He returned to the Oilers last summer as the senior vice-president of hockey operations. With Lowe and MacTavish at the podium was former Oilers assistant GM Scott Howson. Howson was recently fired in February as GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets and now takes over MacTavish’s old role as senior vice-president of hockey operations. Tambellini was not at the news conference.
The announcement came after the Oilers were expected to compete for a playoff spot in the lockout-shortened 2013 NHL season, but instead are all but mathematically eliminated from the post-season.
Heading into NHL action Monday night, the Oilers were 12th in the Western Conference standings with a 16-18-7 record, eight points behind eighth-place Detroit. “I for one really had hoped that we’d be a little more advanced than we are now,” said Lowe. Lowe said a decision on Tambellini was in the works for awhile, but said the team’s current five-game losing streak, including a listless 4-1 loss Saturday to the Calgary Flames, didn’t help. It has been seven miserable years for the Oilers since they pushed the Carolina Hurricanes to a seventh and deciding game in the 2006 Stanley Cup finals.
The team hasn’t made the post-season since and three previous seasons have seen the Oilers at or near the bottom of the NHL. The miserable finishes have translated into acquiring a core of talented young scorers through the draft like Nail Yakupov, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle.
The Oilers also added free agent slick-handed defenceman Justin Schultz this year. MacTavish said the Oilers still need better, bigger, and more rugged role players to support the young guns.
MacTavish, Howson and Lowe have been with the Oilers in management and coaching capacities to varying degrees throughout the seven-year playoff drought.
Steve should re-surface within another team, as he clearly was the right person for the position and for the Oilers to keep with the old guard, won’t work.
