July 15, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg

The contracts of Glen Gulutzan, Paul Coffey, Mark Stuart, and Dustin Schwartz all expired on July 1. Oilers GM Stan Bowman has had his evaluation year, and Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch deserves an opportunity to hire his own staff.

Gulutzan accepted the head coaching position with the Dallas Stars, and former Oilers skating coach and Olympic gold medallist David Pelletier is going to Dallas with him. Coffey is returning to his position as a special advisor to Oilers owner Daryl Katz after nearly two full seasons as an assistant coach. Schwartz was not offered a contract extension after almost eleven years with the organization. Stuart is the only one that will be staying with the Oilers going forward.

Stuart’s contract extension was announced alongside the additions of Paul McFarland as an assistant coach, Peter Aubry as the team’s new goaltending coach, and Conor Allen as a skills coach on Monday.

Paul McFarland

McFarland is regarded as an up and coming coach in the hockey world. The 39-year old was most recently the head coach of the Calgary Hitmen for the 2024-25 season. He spent the previous three seasons as an assistant coach for the Seattle Kraken. McFarland also spent two seasons as an assistant coach with the Florida Panthers (2017-19) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (2019-20). He was the head coach and GM of the Kingston Frontenacs for the 2020-21 season that was unfortunately cancelled due to COVID, and he was the head coach there for three seasons (2014-17). He also spent two seasons as an assistant coach for the Oshawa Generals (2012-2014). Knoblauch gained respect for McFarland while coaching against him in the OHL.

Two assistant coaches left the team, and only one was replaced. That means that the Oilers will have one fewer person behind the bench next season.

McFarland will assume Gulutzan’s old role of running the Oilers powerplay. The Oilers powerplay has steadily declined ever since their record setting season in 2022-23. They went from leading the league in 2022-23 to fourth best in 2023-24 to twelfth last season. Gulutzan did incredible work with the powerplay during his time with the Oilers, but the decline in the powerplay’s performance suggests that they could benefit from a new voice. 

McFarland ran the powerplay for the Panthers while he was there. Their powerplay saw a moderate improvement in his first season (17% to 18.9%), but the Panthers powerplay vaulted up to second best in the league (26.8%) in his second season. He ran the Toronto Maple Leafs powerplay in 2019-20, and they finished sixth in the league (23.1%). McFarland also ran the Kraken powerplay. Their powerplay struggled in their inaugural season in 2021-22 (14%), but they jumped up to 19.8% in year two. Year three saw another slight bump upwards to 20.7%. The Kraken powerplay never saw the top half of the league standings, but it saw incremental improvement every year. McFarland’s powerplay units have demonstrated a pattern of steady improvement.

Mark Stuart

Stuart will run the defence group in addition to his usual role of running the penalty kill. Coffey’s work with the defencemen in regards to instilling the confidence to make plays with the puck should be noted and praised. Coffey has received some criticism because his deployment of certain defence pairings ran contrary to publicly available data. The biggest example that is cited in that argument is playing Darnell Nurse and Brett Kulak together in the Stanley Cup Final. According to Natural Stat Trick’s Line Tool, they were outscored 14-18 as a duo in the regular season, and 2-6 in the first three rounds of the playoffs. Their regular season expected goals percentage was 57.79%. That suggests that the poor goals for percentage was lower than it should have been based on how they played as a pairing. It was 60.83% against the Los Angeles Kings in round one, 35.05% against the Vegas Golden Knights in round two, and 49.10% against the Dallas Stars in round three. They had positive values in every shot and scoring chance metric in the regular season and in rounds one and three of the playoffs. They struggled against the Golden Knights, and they struggled in the Stanley Cup Final; but those were the only two stretches where they really struggled. I don’t personally share the frustration towards Coffey for that deployment choice. I’ll be curious to see if the pairings change significantly under Stuart though. His biggest challenge will be finding the right partner for Nurse.

The Oilers penalty kill is an area of concern after the way it performed during the 2024-25 playoffs. It ended up at 67.1% in the playoffs, which simply isn’t good enough. It’s hard to win when you’re basically spotting a team a powerplay goal every game. The Oilers PK wasn’t anything to write home about during the regular season either (78.2%). Stuart joined the Oilers in 2022-23, but Dave Manson was still running the penalty kill at that time. Stuart was tasked with running the penalty kill when Knoblauch was hired as the coach and Manson was let go during the 2023-24 season. The Oilers penalty kill was at 70% when the change was made, and it spiked once Stuart took over. They killed 25 of their first 27 penalties, and they finished the season at 79.5% overall before their magical 2024 playoff run where they killed 94.3% of their penalties. 

Stuart was thrust into the role of running the penalty kill in November of the 2023-24 season. Teams don’t get enough practice time to make significant systems changes mid-season, so Stuart didn’t have to reinvent the wheel when he took over running the penalty kill. It’s hard to tell how much of that success was inherited by Stuart and how much of it was a result of Stuart’s actions because of the timing of his being tasked with the penalty kill. There was no point in fixing a PK that went 94.3% in the playoffs, so no changes were made to the system leading into the 2024-25 season. 

The system didn’t change from 2023-24 to last season, but the results did. Part of that could be the result of some key personnel changes. Ryan McLeod and Warren Foegele were a consistent PK pairing in 2023-24, and they both left the organization in the summer of 2024. Cody Ceci and Vincent Desharnais were significant contributors to the PK as well. Maybe the system just didn’t fit the players that the Oilers had this past season, or maybe the players just didn’t execute well enough.

Knoblauch told the media that “there will be changes to our system. We will be doing things a little bit differently” in regard to the penalty kill. Knoblauch also talked about conversations that were had about making changes to the penalty kill last season, but they ultimately decided not to do anything to it because of the success they had in the 2024 playoffs and because they had some sustained stretches of success last season. There were also stretches where the penalty kill was costing the Oilers games last season. The sum of all the stretches was mediocre, and the playoffs were a disaster from a penalty killing perspective. Changes are definitely needed.

This is Stuart’s first real crack at implementing changes to the penalty kill. The Oilers lost Connor Brown, who was a key contributor on the penalty kill the last two seasons, so more personnel changes will be needed in addition to any tactical changes.

Peter Aubry

Perhaps the most important of the new hires is Aubry, the new goaltending coach. Schwartz spent nearly eleven years with the Oilers. Cam Talbot, Mikko Koskinen, and Mike Smith all had their best years as Oilers in their second seasons as Oilers, then struggled thereafter. Stuart Skinner had his best season as a rookie and has been declining ever since. That is a long pattern of being unable to recover the games of goaltenders that started to struggle under Schwartz’s tutelage. A new voice was needed, especially since the Oilers appear to be running it back with Skinner and Calvin Pickard.

Aubry spent the last two seasons as an associate coach with the University of Nebraska-Omaha, but the majority of his career was spent as the developmental goaltending coach with the Chicago Blackhawks and the goaltending coach for their AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, from 2015-2022. Oilers GM Stan Bowman would have been quite familiar with Aubry’s work prior to the interview process for this role given the fact that Aubry worked under him in the Blackhawks organization.

While he was with the Blackhawks, Aubry got to work with four goaltenders that were drafted by the organization. Two of those have NHL games to their credit: Drew Commesso (2 NHL games) and Matt Tomkins (6 NHL games), who just signed a contract with the Oilers organization to be the starter for the Bakersfield Condors next season. That could speak more to the organization’s drafting than Aubry’s coaching, but development is a part of the process and the Blackhawks did not develop their drafted goalies well during Aubry’s time with the club based on those NHL games played totals.

Aubry got to work with 25 goaltenders in total while he was with the Blackhawks organization. The majority of the 21 goaltenders that weren’t drafted by the Blackhawks were journeyman veterans like Michael Leighton, Jeff Glass, Malcolm Subban, and Collin Delia.

Anton Forsberg was a part of the Artemi Panarin trade that sent the Bread Man to the Columbus Blue Jackets. He played a season with the Blackhawks before spending the 2018-19 season with the IceHogs. The Blackhawks moved on from Forsberg after that season. Forsberg landed with the Carolina Hurricanes in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season after being waived by the Oilers, Hurricanes, and Winnipeg Jets prior to the season in a wild series of attempts by teams to get him onto their taxi squads for that season. He played all but three games with the Charlotte Checkers of the AHL that season before finally breaking through and earning a full-time NHL job with the Ottawa Senators two years later. Forsberg is an example of a goalie that had NHL success after working with Aubry; but that success came multiple years after working with him, so I can’t directly attribute Forsberg’s success to Aubry’s coaching.

The most successful goalies to emerge under Aubry are undrafted European free agent signings Kevin Lankinen and Arvid Soderblom.

Lankinen played for the IceHogs in 2018-19 and 2019-20, and he posted .910 and .909 save percentages in those seasons. Then he played 37 games for the Blackhawks in 2021-22 and posted a .909 save percentage and a 3.01 goals against average in 37 games. He matched his AHL save percentage from the year before, and reduced his GAA from the AHL in his rookie NHL season. He had a bit of a slip in his sophomore NHL season (.891 sv %, 3.50 GAA), so the team moved on from him. Lankinen just signed a five-year, $22.5 million contract with the Vancouver Canucks. He hasn’t necessarily ripped a starting job away from anyone, but that contract shows that the Canucks think highly enough of him to keep him as a reliable option in case Thatcher Demko’s injury continues to be a problem going forward.

Soderblom has seen NHL action in all four seasons since he joined the Blackhawks organization. He had a fantastic season in Rockford at 22 years old (.919 sv %, 2.76 GAA in 38 games) in 2021-22. His play earned him three games with the Blackhawks that season. In 2022-23, Soderblom put up solid numbers in Rockford (.905 sv %, 2.92 GAA in 33 games) and earned himself fifteen NHL games. He played 32 games for the Blackhawks in 2023-24, and 36 for them last season. His save percentages and GAAs in the NHL are not great, which is why I have not shared them here. We have to remember that he has always played behind a terrible bottom-feeding Blackhawks team. Last season, Soderblom ranked 29th among all goalies that played at least 30 games in goals saved above expected per 60 (0.029) and 28th in goals saved above expected (0.03) according to Money Puck. He ranked higher than Stuart Skinner in those two metrics.

I mentioned that last little tidbit because the Oilers have been exploring the market for goaltenders, and I wrote that Soderblom would be an intriguing trade option as the Blackhawks currently have two goaltenders under contract including new franchise goaltender Spencer Knight a few weeks ago. Soderblom is an RFA and is negotiating a contract with the Blackhawks. He could be available for trade just like we recently saw with Arturs Silovs, the other young goalie that intrigued me as a trade option this summer. Aubry would have a thorough understanding of Soderblom’s game after working with him for two seasons, and Bowman could easily pick Aubry’s brain about Soderblom if there was interest in doing so.

Related: Evaluating the goaltending options for the Oilers

Anyway, the body of Aubry’s work isn’t the most compelling; but Lankinen has turned out well and Soderblom’s progress is encouraging. Aubry’s success with European free agents could make that route a viable option for the Oilers if they find a European goaltender that suits their fancy. The Oilers also have Sam Jonsson and Emil Vinni in the pipeline. Aubry won’t work directly with them, but he could be a part of a bigger goaltending department that may or may not be in the works. Aubry could provide insight to aid those young European goaltenders as they develop in the Oilers system.

Conor Allen

Allen played professional hockey for nine years, including seven NHL games with the New York Rangers. He ended his playing career in 2020-21 and began work as a skills coach. He spent last season with the under seventeen team of the US National Team Development Program. Prior to that, he was with the Sioux City Musketeers of the USHL. Knoblauch said that Allen’s role will be more focussed on “individual player development” at the NHL level. Allen will travel with the Oilers and be a full-time member of the team’s coaching staff, but he will not be behind the bench during games.

Wrap

McFarland has a positive track record of improving NHL powerplay units. He seems like a great hire. I’m not sold on Aubry because there haven’t been many rousing success stories to emerge from under his tutelage, but his most recent study is trending upwards. I also don’t love that Bowman went back to the well to go with a guy he had in Chicago; but I can’t speak to Aubry’s coaching methods, so I can’t say whether he will benefit Skinner or not. The Oilers could certainly benefit from a full-time travelling skills coach to help improve their finishing rates and to help with little details like collecting pucks off the wall and winning board battles. Allen is young but highly regarded, so I’m excited to see how that plays out.

One of the biggest reasons that Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson hired Bowman was because he felt that Bowman is a progressive thinker. McFarland has the most NHL experience of these hires (six years). Aubry has eight years of experience at the professional level, but he was not working directly with NHL goaltenders in those years. Allen has no NHL coaching experience. Even Stuart only has three seasons of NHL coaching experience. Some might view having such an inexperienced staff surrounding Knoblauch (who only has two years of NHL coaching experience) in such an important time for the Oilers franchise carries a level of risk; but we have seen how hiring the most experienced people because of their experience has played out. I have said many times that I would rather bet on someone whose greatest successes are in front of them rather than behind them. That is what Bowman and the Oilers are doing with these hires. They are progressive hires if nothing else.