July 22, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

If Edmonton Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson was being fully honest during his appearance on Bob McCown’s podcast on July 16, 2024, then we are nearing a decision on who will be the next general manager of the Oilers.

This is part four of my series on potential GM candidates. I have gone through every front office in the NHL and even looked into some CHL organizations to find suitable candidates that are connected to Jackson, the Oilers franchise, and/or the city of Edmonton in some way. I have also outlined Jackson’s wish list for qualifications and presented my top five candidates based on that criteria. 

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

I identified Mathieu Darche, Paul Fenton, Mark Hunter, Paul Krepelka, and Ryan Martin as my top five potential candidates. My top pick out of those five candidates is Hunter.

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.”

Related: Oilers GM Candidates: Part Three – The Short List

Jackson’s comment about wanting someone who has “…been in the league and been in an organization that has had success” implies that he wants someone that had had success with an NHL organization, but that is not exactly what he said. Hunter has been a part of a tremendously successful organization. Hunter does have NHL experience as an AGM with the Toronto Maple Leafs from 2015-2018, but that’s not where his success came.

Hunter is a part owner and the GM of the OHL’s London Knights. He has been part owner of that organization since 1999. Hunter has been a part of two Memorial Cup wins in 2005 and 2016. The Knights lost in the Memorial Cup championship game this past spring. The Knights have won five OHL championships in seven trips to the OHL final since 2005. 

Hunter’s Knights program has graduated many players to the NHL. Hunter clearly understands how to develop junior players. It’s incredibly difficult to keep a CHL team competitive for a long time. Hunter’s Knights have been competitive for the better part of three decades. That couldn’t happen without fantastic player development. It’s truly remarkable to think about. Hunter has demonstrated the ability to keep a team competitive for a long period of time, which is exactly what the Oilers need now if they have eyes on staying competitive throughout the remainder of the careers of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, whose contracts expire within the next two years. A GM with a commitment to winning long term would go a long way towards getting those two superstars to extend their stays in Edmonton.

The Oilers selected two players from the Knights in the 2024 draft. The Oilers have selected more players from the Knights organization than from any other organization in the franchise’s draft history. Jackson has a close relationship with Wasserman agent Dave Gagner, who is Bouchard’s agent. Washington Capitals forward Connor McMichael and Nashville Predators forward Luke Evangelista are both Knights alumni and former clients of Jackson’s, so we know that Jackson and Hunter have had a working relationship in the past.

Related: Oilers trade up to select Sam O’Reilly with final pick in the first round

Hunter has worked with star players including Patrick Kane, Corey Perry, Mitch Marner, and Evan Bouchard. He also got to work with Auston Matthews in his first two NHL seasons. While he can say that he has worked with those stars, Hunter has not quite had the type of situation that the Oilers find themselves in now. Jackson made a comment about the “interplay of superstars and younger players”. That implies that the superstars are the older players, not the younger players. The Oilers have to continue to find players to complement McDavid and Draisaitl. Matthews is a superstar, but he was the young player while Hunter was with the Maple Leafs. That situation was different.

Having the star players in junior and building competitive rosters around those players is closer to what Jackson was describing, but the difference between the Oilers situation and the situations at the junior level is the contracts and the term. CHL players can only play until they’re twenty years old, which gives them four or five seasons before they are aged out. That gives younger players the opportunity to eventually become the leaders and the stars. The NHL is different. McDavid and Draisaitl won’t be going anywhere for a long time in an ideal world. The Oilers need someone that can develop players to fit into complementary roles for a long time, not necessarily players that will take over as the top dogs eventually.

The other concern I have about Hunter is that I’m not sure that I would call him “progressive”. He lost out on the Maple Leafs GM job in 2018. Kyle Dubas got that job because of his affinity for analytics and data. Dubas is a progressive thinker in that regard. The Knights have twelve scouts, but the organization has no analytics staff listed on their hockey operations staff directory. I’m not saying that analytics equals “progressive”. “Progressive” can mean other things as well, but the points that I just made about Hunter’s seeming lack of a relationship with analytics suggest that he might not have such a “progressive” attitude.

Plot Twist

Having said all of that, I’m going to throw one more name into the mix here because I now feel that it was a MASSIVE oversight after examining Jackson’s comments about the qualifications he desires more closely. Jackson said that a focus on player development and being a part of a successful organization are “critical”. That tells me that those are the two most important things to Jackson.

I defaulted to Darche out of the Tampa Bay Lightning organization because he has been a finalist for multiple NHL GM positions in recent years and he has the highest title of the AGMs in the Lightning organization. However, there is another candidate in the Lightning organization who more closely fits Jackson’s criteria. 

That man is Lightning AGM, Director of Player Development and Syracuse Crunch GM Stacy Roest. Roest started with the Lightning as their Director of Player Development and as an Assistant Coach for the Crunch in 2013. He was promoted to AGM of the Lightning and GM of the Crunch in 2019.

The Lightning won back to back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021. Those championship Lightning teams were made up of several home grown players. I’ll only focus on players that played for the Crunch after Roest came into the organization in 2013. Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point, Anthony Cirelli, Yanni Gourde, Cedric Paquette, Carter Verhaeghe, Erik Cernak, Mathieu Joseph, and Mitchell Stephens were all members of the 2020 Lightning Stanley Cup championship team that played games for the Syracuse Crunch in the 2013-14 season or later. Darren Raddysh, Nick Perbix, and Alex Barre-Boulet were parts of last season’s Lightning squad that have played games for the Crunch as well.

Raddysh and his brother, Taylor Raddysh, were both former clients of Jackson’s. Both of the Raddysh brothers played for Roest’s Crunch teams after Roest was named GM of the Crunch in 2019. We also know that Jackson hired Mike Fanelli, who worked for the Lightning organization for four years during Roest’s tenure with the club. Roest played for Ken Holland’s Detroit Red Wings in 1998-99, 1999-2000, and 2002-03. While he has no direct ties to the city of Edmonton, he does have a big tie to the province of Alberta. Roest was born in Lethbridge. Also, Roest played his junior hockey for the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers.

Roest has professional ties to Jackson and the province of Alberta. He has been a part of a successful NHL organization for a number of years. He has a strong track record of success with player development. While I’m unsure of Roest’s relationship with analytics, he comes from an organization that has a track record of using analytics heavily. Communication skills are hard to judge when you’ve never met or interacted with a person, so I’ll have to forego judgment on that front.

The Big Reveal

Alright, I have made the cases for all of the possible candidates. Now comes the moment where I reveal who I believe will be the next GM of the Oilers.

There have only been two NHL GMs to win Stanley Cups as GM of two different teams: Tommy Gorman with the 1934 Chicago Blackhawks and the 1935 Montreal Maroons, and Jim Rutherford with the 2006 Carolina Hurricanes and the 2016 and 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins. The odds of a previous Stanley Cup winning GM winning another Stanley Cup as the GM of a second team are incredibly low, so I would not choose a GM that has won a Stanley Cup previously.

There are only four GMs to have ever won a Stanley Cup after being the GM of a different team previously: Rutherford, Brian Burke (2007 Anaheim Ducks), Craig Patrick (1991 and 1992 Penguins), and Bill Torrey (1980-83 New York Islanders). The odds of a former GM winning a Stanley Cup in a second opportunity to be a GM are also incredibly low, so I would not choose a former GM. Jackson wants someone who is progressive, and hiring a former GM is not a progressive move in my opinion.

This portion of Jackson’s quote from McCown’s podcast is the most telling to me: “…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.” This quote tells me that Jackson has his eyes on an AGM of a team that has won the Stanley Cup. He also specifically mentioned having done a great job in player development, an aspect of the job that Jackson identified as being “critical”.

We know that Jackson prefers to keep internal information out of the press. He prefers to keep information close to his chest. We also know that Jackson likes to make progressive hires. Those progressive hires are usually somewhat surprising but intelligent hires. That makes me think that the next Oilers GM is going to be someone whose name has not appeared in the media as a potential frontrunner for the position.

Having said all of that, I believe that the next GM of the Oilers will be Stacy Roest. He has the two most critical qualifications that Jackson is looking for, which are a track record of success in player development and having been a part of a successful organization. Roest has been in a hockey operations job in the NHL since 2013, and he had an NHL playing career as well. He has been an AGM and the GM of an AHL team for five years, so he has managerial experience. The Lightning have long been viewed as a progressive organization, and Roest would be a first time NHL GM, so I would view it as a progressive hire. It also helps that Roest has had professional interactions with Jackson in the past.

We shall see if I’m right in the coming days.