May 6, 2026 by Ryan Lotsberg

The cries for Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch’s job can be heard all across Oil Country. They were loud before the Oilers lost their first round playoff series to the fledgling Anaheim Ducks, and they’re deafening in the aftermath of it. 

Knoblauch faced a ton of criticism this season. He took heat for a lot of things including employing terrible systems, coaching the offence out of the team, relying on Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl too much, shuffling the line combinations too often, and not giving young players enough ice time or opportunity.

If you want me to echo those sentiments just so you can read something that confirms your bias, then this isn’t the piece for you. I simply don’t agree with the takes coming from the people that want Knoblauch fired.

Many people blamed the systems that Knoblauch was running for the team’s poor start. Well, as Knoblauch himself stated, the systems that he started the season with were the same ones that got the Oilers to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. Some people chose to believe that he was lying because what they saw on the ice didn’t match Knoblauch’s story and what Knoblauch said didn’t match their narrative. 

What we saw at the start of the season was a forward group with eight new faces on it, many of whom had little to no NHL experience, that were coming to a new team and getting comfortable with the systems that were in place. I’m not a tactical expert, and I can’t comment on what exactly Knoblauch was telling the players to do. I can tell you that if it looked like they were employing different tactics than normal, it was because the players weren’t executing properly.

I don’t feel that was Knoblauch’s fault, but it was his problem to fix. He told the media that he would be making some systems related changes on two occasions, the first being in early December and the second being during the Olympic break. The team’s results stabilized shortly after making those systems related changes both times, but the team was ultimately unable to put any long winning streaks together. The consistent inconsistency continued.

Some might look at that and determine that the coach wasn’t able to fix the problem, so he needs to go. My stance is that this roster was simply not at the level it had been the previous three seasons and if a group of professional hockey players can’t figure out how to execute a system that was changed for them twice, then that group of players isn’t good enough.

Let’s tackle the claims of Knoblauch having coached the offence out of the team. To address those claims, I present to you the Oilers’ expected goals for totals and their league rank in that category for each season since 2022-23:

It’s true that the amount of expected goals has decreased in each of the last two seasons, but the fact is that the Oilers have been a top five team in the league in that metric through that period of time. To say that Knoblauch has coached the offence out of the team is over dramatic, and it ignores his first season where the offence was plentiful. 

Let’s do the same thing for the defensive side of the puck to paint a clearer picture of why the Oilers’ xG share has decreased over the last two seasons:

Season	xGA	League Rank
2022-23	163.97	8
2023-24	156.97	9
2024-25	157.89	7
2025-26	170.41	17

Knoblauch’s teams in 2023-24 and 2024-25 had the lowest xGA totals in this sample. The Oilers took a major step backwards this year. Knoblauch made systemic changes on two occasions. Oilers GM Stan Bowman brought in two new goaltenders along with two defensive specialists at the trade deadline (one forward and one defenceman), and the Oilers STILL couldn’t keep the puck out of their net in the playoffs. They got their best results down the stretch when some different players were brought in to help with the defensive issues. That makes me think it was a player related issue.

Some would argue that Paul Coffey being placed back on the bench to run the defence led to the Oilers’ slightly improved defensive play down the stretch. I can’t argue for or against that claim because I’m not privy to any conversation that Coffey had with Knoblauch or the defencemen. I can’t rule out Coffey having had an impact, but I can’t confirm that he was the reason for the improvement either. It’s correlation rather than causation in my opinion.

Let’s address the over reliance on McDavid and Draisaitl criticism next. Knoblauch played McDavid and Draisaitl together at five-on-five for an average of 6:33 per game in 2024-25, which was :25 higher than he did in 2023-24 and :42 more than former Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft did in 2022-23. As of October 28, 2025, Knoblauch was playing the dynamic duo together for an average of 9:28 per game. The team was struggling to score goals, and many people looked to Knoblauch’s over reliance on McDavid and Draisaitl as the reason why.

Related: Knoblauch’s reliance on McDavid and Draisaitl

Well, McDavid and Draisaitl finished the season averaging just 4:53 per game together, so Knoblauch clearly stopped defaulting to that option. The Oilers were scoring 2.26 five-on-five goals/60 through October 28, 2025 according to Natrual Stat Trick. From that date onwards, they scored 2.6 goals/60.

That put them in a tie for fourteenth in the league, so it’s not like that decision vaulted them back up to the top of the league. I don’t believe that playing McDavid and Draisaitl together so much earlier in the season was the reason for the team’s goal scoring struggles. I would point more to the fact that the team lost five of their top ten most prolific scorers based on five-on-five points/60 from 2024-25 plus a sixth that was out due to injury to start the season (Zach Hyman). They were replaced with less efficient, less productive, and less experienced players, and the results were what they were.

Having said that, Knoblauch stopped playing McDavid and Draisaitl together as much. Knoblauch did what many fans wanted him to do, so he shouldn’t be criticized for that specific action. Criticizing him for that at this point isn’t fair, objective, or informed.

While we’re talking about line combinations, let’s tackle the line shuffling issue. The argument against Knoblauch is that he wouldn’t stick with line combinations long enough for them to gain any chemistry.

If you’ve followed the Oilers closely for any length of time at all, you understand that the lines usually stay the same when the team wins and they tend to change when they lose. They don’t generally change after every loss, but they will if losses start piling up or goal scoring is down.

This was a weird season because the Oilers only won more than three games in a row twice all season long. Nothing they did worked for any length of time. Some would argue that Knoblauch changing the lines all the time was a reason for the lack of success. I feel that Knoblauch would’ve shuffled the lines less often if the team had more winning streaks.

Knoblauch was praised for his ability to understand his players and to make tweaks to the lineup in his first couple of seasons with the Oilers. This year, many of the lineup tweaks that Knoblauch made didn’t work, and now he’s being criticized for making too many tweaks. I suppose it’s a results oriented business, but the shift in opinion on Knoblauch tweaking the lines is funny to me.

Related: Knoblauch’s playoff moves continue to pay dividends

I also remember the constant complaints about recent previous Oilers coaches not changing the lines often enough. I’m not sure what to tell you if you’re someone that complained about the lines not changing often enough in the past and are complaining about there being too much line shuffling now.

Ultimately, there’s more than one set of lines that can be successful and lines get hot and cold much like individual players do, so I don’t mind seeing different line combinations. I have zero issue with the amount of line juggling that Knoblauch did this season. My sense is that the puzzle pieces just didn’t fit this year. If the coach tries a billion line combinations and nothing works, perhaps the roster construction is the issue.

Some of those puzzle pieces were young players and prospects. There was a lot of frustration from fans about the way that young players were handled by Knoblauch this season.

Let’s start with Matt Savoie. Knoblauch was clear about the plan to ease the rookie into the NHL routine by giving him bottom six minutes at five-on-five. That’s exactly what he did. Savoie got multiple stints in the top six on lines with Draisaitl, Vasily Podkolzin, and Jack Roslovic at various points in the first half of the season; but those opportunities were never “extended” opportunities. Savoie showed some flashes of ability to play in the top six in those opportunities, but the points were slow to come for him.

It wasn’t until after the Olympic break when Savoie got an extended run of games on a top skill line. This time, he found himself playing beside McDavid, and he went on a hot streak.

Related: Savoie is starting to find his way

So, why wasn’t he beside McDavid sooner you ask? Savoie admitted that the condensed schedule during the first two thirds of the season was taxing on him. The two-week Olympic break clearly did him some good. He played one game for the Bakersfield Condors during the break, and he came back to the Oilers refreshed and ready to produce. So I’m supposed to believe that giving a rookie getting used to the grind of an 82-game NHL schedule, especially a condensed schedule, and feeling taxed from it MORE ice time was the right course of action? I disagree with that. 

I love Savoie as a player and I wanted to see him stapled to Draisaitl’s side when the season started. I actually think Knoblauch handled Savoie the right way this season, and Savoie’s game benefited from it.

Knoblauch intended to do the same with Ike Howard, but to a lesser extent. Savoie got penalty killing time, which was never in the cards for Howard. Howard is one of those players that needs to be in a scoring role to be effective. That spot wasn’t there for Howard this season, and he didn’t rip that spot away from anyone. He put up good numbers in the AHL this season, and he appeared to have improved during his most recent NHL game. I’m not sold that the details of Howard’s game are at a level worthy of top six NHL minutes yet, so I’m not upset about how he was deployed this season.

The trend that was more irksome to Oilers fans was players like Quinn Hutson, Connor Clattenburg, and Roby Jarventie getting six to eight minutes per night despite fantastic play in the AHL and appearing to be more effective than some veterans occupying space in the bottom six.

Related: Deep Dive: Does Knoblauch hate young players?

Sure, it would’ve been nice to have seen them get more shifts, but this is a small quibble in my opinion. I’d rather see prospects like this get limited NHL ice time early in their careers than to see them thrown in the deep end and having their confidence shattered. They got a taste of NHL pace, and I’m fine with that.

We also have to be open to the possibility that these prospects simply aren’t as good or ready as we think they are or that we have been led to believe that they are. I don’t think Hutson has the foot speed to have taken a full-time roster spot from anyone this season. My gut tells me that he’s a tweener, and the two-year, two-way contract that he signed this season tells me the Oilers feel the same way about the 24 year old.

My sense is that Clattenburg was called up to provide some energy to a team that was flat and lifeless at the time. I see potential in him, but this season was too soon to expect him to have taken an NHL spot from anyone.

Jarventie seems to be the closest to NHL ready of those three prospects, but all he did was some cardio in his NHL call up late in the season. Jarventie signed a two-year contract with HC Ambri-Piotta in Switzerland on Tuesday. If you recall, Jarventie signed a three-year contract with Tappara Tampere in Finland last year before re-signing with the Oilers. The Oilers still have Jarventie’s NHL rights since he’s a restricted free agent. He could re-sign with the Oilers again like he did last year. The contract in Switzerland is simply an insurance policy in case the Oilers decide not to offer him another contract.

I should also address the Noah Philp situation here. As a refresher, Philp scored his first NHL goal in the Oilers’ second game of the season against the Vancouver Canucks. Philp was a healthy scratch for the next game. I agree that it was odd to scratch a young player after scoring a goal, but I watched Philp give the puck away in his own end from the upper bowl in that game. I suspect that was the reason he was scratched. A lot of people were high on Philp. I was pretty sold on him being a tweener. He played two games for the Carolina Hurricanes after being claimed off waivers. The Hurricanes are an elite team, but they’re still a second NHL team that Philp was unable to crack. There’s a chance that he’s not as good as many people thought he was.

I’ve spent a lot of time defending Knoblauch in this piece and throughout the season. I simply feel that the gripes that most fans have with him can be argued, which I feel that I’ve done in this piece. 

Having said that, Knoblauch isn’t perfect. Accountability was billed as being a strength of his when he was hired. He hasn’t been afraid to pull veterans out of the lineup (especially free agent acquisitions), but he hasn’t held his stars accountable well in my opinion. He doesn’t want his stars playing with fear of being benched for a turnover; but there has to come a time when Evan Bouchard needs to take a seat when the turnovers start piling up and turning into goals against. Instead, Bouchard was benched for a high-sticking penalty earlier this season. Draisaitl was benched for taking a tripping penalty in the fourth game of the 2024-25 season. Those are the only two times that star Oilers have been held accountable under Knoblauch. 

Everyone makes mistakes once in a while, so I get not being militant about them; but I want consistent turnovers and consistently poor puck management to be punished. Puck management is always an issue when the Oilers are mired in losing hockey. Poor puck management is the behaviour that needs to be punished when that behaviour is the issue. Benching someone for taking a penalty when puck management is the real issue is the wrong approach.

Sure, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more fire from Knoblauch; but his calmness and poise were praised when the team was winning. The messaging seems to be that Knoblauch’s habits and tendencies are fine when the team is winning, but they’re issues when the team is losing. That isn’t fair.

Aside from flawed accountability practices and a desire for a little more fire, I have no real issue with Knoblauch being the coach here. I’m not convinced that yet another coaching change is the answer to what ails the Oilers. Knoblauch might ultimately end up falling on the sword as we’ve seen so often in professional sports, but I don’t think it’s all that deserved.

John Cooper’s Tampa Bay Lightning were swept by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round of the 2019 playoffs after the Lightning had won the President’s Trophy. Cooper did not lose his job. He stayed on and won back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Lightning the next two seasons. Knoblauch is not Cooper, but a similar result is possible with Knoblauch at the helm of the Oilers. The Oilers roster must improve in order for that to happen though.