May 17, 2022 by Ryan Lotsberg

Jay Woodcroft got his foot in the door in the NHL as the Video Coach with the Detroit Red Wings in 2005. Woodcroft went on to become an Assistant Coach with the San Jose Sharks and later the Edmonton Oilers. 

Todd McLellan was an Assistant Coach with the Red Wings when Woodcroft was the Video Coach there. McLellan brought Woodcroft along to San Jose to be a part of his coaching staff when he became the head coach of the Sharks in 2008. McLellan also brought Woodcroft to be a part of his staff when he became the Head Coach of the Edmonton Oilers in 2015.

Woodcroft spent a decade learning the craft of coaching at the highest level under McLellan. The two were finally split apart when the Oilers fired Todd McLellan in 2018. The Oilers kept Woodcroft in the organization by making him the head coach of their AHL affiliate in Bakersfield.

Woodcroft’s success in Bakersfield helped him earn the head coaching job in Edmonton in February. He took an Oilers team that was in a tailspin and helped them finish in second place in the Pacific division. 

The reward for that great work was a matchup with McLellan’s Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Who else would be the opposing coach in Woodcroft’s first playoff series as a NHL head coach? The student got his chance to show the teacher what he had learned.

Woodcroft started the series by dressing seven defencemen and eleven forwards for game one, which is an unusual strategy for many, but a familiar one for Woodcroft. That game was tight, but the Kings would prevail 4-3 thanks to a goal off of a scrambled play after a Mike Smith giveaway. The Oilers made too many mistakes in defensive coverage that led to goals against. McLellan’s Kings taught Woodcroft’s Oilers a tough lesson in that game.

Woodcroft went back to a more traditional lineup with six defencemen and twelve forwards for game two. He inserted Josh Archibald into the lineup in place of Kris Russell. That move may not have directly led to the Oilers win, but the Oilers would cruise to a 6-0 victory.

The Oilers didn’t make any lineup changes ahead of game three, and the result was similar. They won 8-2. It was McLellan’s turn to make a move.

His press conference after game three lasted all of thirty one seconds. He basically said that every player on his team played badly and then said goodnight. McLellan changed all of his forward lines and defence pairings for game four. It clearly worked because they beat the Oilers 4-0. It was a shellacking of their own after getting destroyed in the previous two games.

It was the student’s turn to make a move.

The Oilers hadn’t started well in any game of the series despite a couple of lopsided results. They needed a better start in game five at home. Woodcroft promised the media that they would see an Oilers team that was prepared for game five. He chose to start the third line featuring Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Derek Ryan, and Josh Archibald rather than the Connor McDavid line that had started all of the previous games.

That move didn’t work out so well. The Kings scored the first goal of the game, and the Oilers had a sluggish first period. They ended up being down by two goals going into the third period. Woodcroft shuffled the deck by putting McDavid and Leon Draisaitl together for the third period. McDavid scored a powerplay goal early in the period. LA would counter, but then Draisaitl would eventually get a short-handed goal and a powerplay goal to send the game to overtime. I won’t discuss that dreadful overtime period, but the Kings ended up winning the game despite Woodcroft’s line shuffling.

Woodcroft had to revert back to the seven defencemen and eleven forwards strategy because Darnell Nurse was suspended for game six. Nurse plays a lot of tough minutes, and Woodcroft called on the group as a whole to fill those minutes. Philip Broberg was called up from Bakersfield to play in game six. Russell came back into the lineup in place of Warren Foegele.

Having eleven forwards ended up playing into Woodcroft’s hands. Woodcroft ran McDavid, Nugent-Hopkins, and Ryan McLeod at centre and rotated them between four pairs of wingers. McLellan wanted to have defensive specialist Philip Danault matched up against McDavid whenever possible, but the unpredictable line combinations from Woodcroft made it tough for McLellan to get the matchups that he wanted.

McDavid struck early in the game, and Evander Kane put the Oilers up 2-0 in the first period. Kane scored a second goal in the first period to make it 3-0, but the goal was called off because of goaltender interference. Woodcroft chose not to challenge the play even though it looked like Matthew Roy’s skate was the last to make contact with Jonathan Quick before the puck went into the net. If Woodcroft would’ve challenged and been wrong, then the Oilers would’ve taken a penalty. Goalie interference calls are unpredictable. The call on the ice was “no goal”, so the evidence would have to have been clear cut in order to overturn the call. Woodcroft opted not to take the risk.

The Kings ended up tying the game early in the third period, but Tyson Barrrie notched the game winning goal later in the period. Kane added an empty netter, and the Oilers forced a game seven in Edmonton.

Nurse came back for game seven, and Broberg came out of the lineup. Woodcroft decided to stick with the eleven and seven strategy though. The Oilers started a line of Kane, McDavid, and Zach Hyman. However, there were many shifts where Draisaitl and Kailer Yamamoto would flank McDavid. If McLellan thought it was tough to get the matchups that he wanted at home in game six, then it was going to be impossible to get them in Edmonton without the last change. Nobody knew when McDavid would be coming onto the ice.

He was unbelievable in game seven. He was dangerous on every shift. His edge work and his spatial intelligence were on full display. Woodcroft gave him 27:23 of ice time in game seven with good reason. The Oilers would win game seven with a tidy 2-0 shutout.

Woodcroft has less than half of a season as a NHL coach under his belt. There were questions about his ability to make adjustments on the fly during games and during a series because of his inexperience and his predecessor’s inability to make the necessary adjustments in the playoffs. 

He had to face his former mentor in his first ever NHL playoff series as a head coach, and he emerged victorious. Whether it was a lineup change or trusting Mike Smith in goal after his costly mistake in game one, Woodcroft made all of the right moves. That series was an example of the student becoming the teacher.