July 17, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

Edmonton Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson has a big decision to make this summer. He’s responsible for hiring the team’s new general manager. That decision could come within the next week or so, as Jackson said on Bob McCown’s podcast on Tuesday.

The heavy lifting of creating the 2024-25 Oilers roster is done. The team needs to sign restricted free agents Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, and then they do what needs to be done to make the roster cap compliant by the time the season starts in October. The Leon Draisaitl contract negotiation looms large, but there is plenty of time for that to get done.

In case you missed it, I wrote a two-part piece outlining many potential GM candidates. Most of them have connections to Jackson, the Oilers franchise, or the city of Edmonton. I plan to whittle the list down in future pieces, but I want to discuss some of the things that Jackson might be looking for in a GM candidate. I also want to analyze the hirings that Jackson has made in the hockey operations department in the near calendar year that he has been on the job to see if there’s anything that could provide clues as to what he might be thinking about for this hire.

Related: Oilers GM Candidates: Part One – The Former NHL GMs

Here is a list of Jackson’s hires thus far:

Jackson has taken different approaches with his hiring methods thus far, which makes it tough to figure out what he’s thinking for the GM role. He created positions for Parkatti, Fanelli, and Larsson based on team needs and their experience. Jackson basically gave Parkatti the analytics department. Parkatti held positions involving data and analytics for Suncor, Conexus Credit Union, and the Government of Alberta prior to joining the Oilers. He also won an Oilers blog contest, the Oilers Hackathon 2.0, in 2013 which landed him a temporary position with the Oilers’ analytics department. Fanelli has his foot in two different departments that he has experience with previously. Larsson held a bunch of different roles in the USHL, but none of them are quite like the role he has now with the Oilers. Larsson is solely responsible for creating development plans for players and for ensuring that players, coaches, and managers all know what is expected of the players.

Related: Oilers Hire Fanelli and Segall

Jackson has made five hires in positions that every NHL organization has: Knoblauch, Coffey, Rylan Kearney, Segall, and Pracey. 

This is Knoblauch’s first NHL coaching job, but he coached at the junior and AHL levels for many years before Jackson hired him. Coffey was an Oilers and NHL legend as a player, but his only coaching experience before hopping behind the Oilers bench last season came in minor hockey. Rylan Kearney’s experience goes beyond scouting, but her experience in founding a professional hockey league qualifies her to be a scout. Segall spent many years as a video coach at the collegiate and AHL levels before joining the Oilers. Pracey had long tenures in the amateur scouting departments of two different NHL teams before Jackson hired him.

Related: Oilers Fire Woodcroft and Manson & Name Knoblauch and Coffey as replacements

Out of those five hires, Pracey is the only one that had an established career in the NHL in their area of expertise prior to being hired by Jackson. One out of five. Only one out of five hires in typical roles that all NHL organizations have had experience in their given field before Jackson hired them. Jackson has shown that he isn’t afraid to give people a chance if their experience and expertise merits giving them a chance. That experience doesn’t necessarily have to have been NHL experience.

Related: Oilers Mutually Part Ways with Wright, Hire Pracey

As I’ve just outlined, Jackson has done a lot of work to remodel the hockey operations department. He believes that they have a capable group. Jackson doesn’t need to hire someone that will desire full control of the wheel. The Oilers don’t need someone to come in and revamp the hockey operations department because Jackson has already done that. Jackson has called himself an active and hands-on CEO multiple times. While we know he does not want to be the GM, I think it’s fair to say that he doesn’t intend to push himself further away from the controls by giving someone a greater title than GM.

Jackson did say that experience with a successful organization is important, but his being a hands-on CEO tells me that we can rule out a legacy GM. Names like Ray Shero, Doug Wilson, Dale Tallon, and Stan Bowman have all had incredible success as NHL GMs. All of them have had more powerful titles in addition to their GM roles for extended periods of time. They have all gotten to build their own hockey operations departments in the past. My gut tells me that they won’t be excited about coming to a situation where the hockey operations team below them is already set and they won’t get to bring in their own people.

Aside from Bowman, who isn’t currently employed by an NHL team for obvious reasons, all of these men currently have Senior Advisor roles with other teams. They could be waiting in the wings for more powerful positions with other teams. Their power would be limited in Edmonton, which would make the job potentially unappealing to them. They could also be content with their advisor roles at this stage in their careers. Either way, they don’t seem like fits for the Oilers GM job.

So, who is a fit for the job then? While on Bob McCown’s podcast on Tuesday, Jackson said that he’s looking for someone who has “worked in organizations that have had success, who has had to deal with sort of the interplay with superstars and younger players… there’s teams that have won the Cup and their assistant GMs have done good jobs, so there are people that have gone that route and they’ve won, and they see they’ve done a great job in development. To me, that’s such a critical thing is like player development, so I’m looking for people who have done a good job in that; and then just you know, just a progressive attitude, a collaborative attitude, a very good communicator. Those are the things that I’m looking for… It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who’s got a ton of experience as a GM, but someone who’s been in the league for a number of years and been in an organization that has had success. I think that’s critical.”

Those comments basically mirror what I thought he might be looking for while I was putting this piece together prior to hearing the clip from McCown’s podcast. Jackson needs someone whose vision for the team in the future aligns with his. That tells me that a strong pre-existing relationship with Jackson will be an advantage for a potential candidate. That’s just how life works. It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. 

This person needs to be able to facilitate open communication with the existing staff members in the hockey operations department. The successful candidate will need to be someone that will put their trust in the hockey operations team that is currently in place. Ideally, this person will be open to incorporating analytics into their decision making process because Jackson recently beefed up the Oilers’ analytics department.

Most importantly, the new GM will need to be committed to winning. That seems like an obvious statement, but it’s an important one because of the impending contract negotiations with Draisaitl and Connor McDavid.

“There’s probably going to be a point where we sit down with both of them and chat. I mean, Connor’s not going to be involved in a negotiation involving Leon, but philosophically when we get our new general manager, I’m sure we’re going to meet and talk about things and not do it in a vacuum. I think it’s important that we have the collaboration of our top two players and that they know what the vision is and what our new GM is thinking and I sort of anticipate at some point” said Jackson when he was asked about how the relationship between Draisaitl and McDavid will impact their contract situations.

Draisaitl and McDavid have both said that winning is the most important thing to them. They are the two best players in the world right now, they’re in the primes of their careers, and they have not won a Stanley Cup yet. I don’t think they will be satisfied with just one Stanley Cup either. They will need to know that their GM is going to do what it takes to keep the team’s championship window open for as long as possible.

Jackson seems keen on having Draisaitl and McDavid be on the same page with the new GM. Given the new timeline of seven to ten days as of Tuesday for the hiring and the fact that McDavid’s wedding is on July 27, 2024, I’m thinking that Jackson has already had some of those philosophical discussions with his superstars. I would expect another such conversation with the new GM involved later in the summer.

While we’re waiting for Jackson to make his decision, I’m going to evaluate the fit of some of the candidates that I mentioned in my previous piece based on the criteria that I’ve outlined here in another piece soon. I’ll come to my own decision, and we’ll see whether or not I can predict who Jackson will hire.