Edmonton Oilers Shake Up Coaching Situation Ahead Of Schedule

When the Edmonton Oilers brought in Pat Quinn as head coach and Tom Renney as associate a year ago, there was believed to be an understanding at the time that Renney would move up into Quinn’s position upon his retirement, possibly at the conclusion of their three-year deals. According to general manager Steve Tambellini, the succession called more for Quinn to move into an advisory role and Renney to take over as head coach after the second year.

Either way, Quinn’s time as the big dog behind the bench is over. On Tuesday, Tambellini announced that he was accelerating his plan based on the poor season by the Oilers last season by moving Quinn into a the role of Senior Hockey Advisor, while Renney would immediately take over as head coach.

 

Renney is obviously excited about his promotion, which would have inevitably happened whether it be now or a year or two from now.

 

Tambellini and Renney are all smiles about the news, but Quinn was caught a bit offguard by it. He doesn’t view this move as a promotion, and claims to have been unaware of any plan on Tambellini’s end to have him move into an advisory role at any point during his Oilers’ tenure. Quinn was simply looking forward to returning as head coach.

“Is it a promotion? I’d say not,” said Quinn. “My career has been coaching and that’s why I wanted to come back into the game with Edmonton last year. We went through some tough times, but I was looking forward to continuing to help to change the climate there and continue to help this organization go back to respectability in the sense of winning. I’ll continue to do that, but it’s just going to be in a different capacity, obviously.”

It’s easy to understand why Quinn doesn’t like the move if he was truly unaware of Tambellini’s intentions to move him out eventually. If you come into a situation as a head coach for a certain amount of years, you want to see that through.

But this is a step in the right direction for the Oilers, who are coming off a horrendous season as the league’s worst team by 12 points. Granted, the Oilers had plenty of injuries to deal with, the least of which to starting goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. And it’s the general manager’s job to make sure there are enough pieces in place to assure injuries don’t completely derail a season. But Quinn didn’t make matters any better for the organization.

He was a figurehead, to say the least. Renney was the man in charge of getting the team ready to play and adopting strategies. But it doesn’t help when he’s the one calling the shots, yet the players have a different master entirely to please. Now that Renney will have complete control over his players, he can much more easily execute a game plan to get the organization on track and down a winning path – much like he was able to do when taking over as head coach of the New York Rangers after they missed the playoffs for seven years.

Quinn might still want to be a coach, but the position has just passed him by. The Oilers had a better option in-house that they planned on promoting soon enough anyway. There was no point in delaying the process. Renney was brought in to eventually be head coach. And now, he is.