Stan Bowman Is Doing Connor McDavid's Bidding

He fired his coach, which the one time he tried in Chicago, didn't go so well.

Perhaps no team in the NHL has been on the clock as much as the Edmonton Oilers are on the clock. They might have only one season to keep the greatest player of all-time, which is what Connor McDavid is, happy enough to not tell them to do one and get his thumb out for any passing ride. It's hard to think of a parallel in hockey. Maybe this same team nearly 40 years ago with Wayne Gretzky, at that time the best player of all-time. Except trading him was a decision the Oilers made, and not one they had to. Gretzky didn't force their hand the way McDavid might. And that "might" is the biggest threat being wielded in the league. It is Godzilla rising out of the ocean.

Not since the Cavs had to try and rename the city of Cleveland for LeBron has their been such a seismic peril for one team looming. Perhaps Tom Brady's years-long build-up to the ego missile crisis that came to a head in New England with Bill Belichick was another. But they had already accomplished so much and Brady was so much closer to the end of his career. There is the added panic that the Oilers, as much as they've done, haven't won a Cup, and should McDavid high-tail it in the next two years, they might never again. Just like LeBron the first time, the doom of being left without anything that was promised and hoped and expected would leave everything in shambles.

So the free-for-all has begun. Edmonton are under the full Defcon 1 of "Jesus might be leaving, look busy!" Which is why Stan Bowman canned Kris Knoblauch today. Make no mistake, if McDavid wanted Knoblauch around, he would be. Whether he demanded the firing or just didn't give a shit, we'll never know. We just know Knoblauch didn't have the #97 seal of approval anymore.

He probably lost it after last year's Final. While returning to a Final is an incredible accomplishment, the feeling coming out of the Oilers dressing room was that they were farther away from the Panthers in '25 than they were in '24. McDavid openly questioned the team's methods after the Game 6 loss, as the Oilers wilted under the Florida forecheck by consistently trying to trudge up the boards in their own zone, playing right into the Panthers' hands (paws?).

But then, Knoblauch was probably only working with what he had. The Oilers didn't have the multiple puck-movers on the blue line who could either open up space for themselves with their feet, or had the deftness and balls to play passes to the middle of their own zone. It's arguable he didn't have any. Evan Bouchard is only good in the other end. Walman and Ekholm are second-pairing players miscast. That's not on Knoblauch. Nor is it on Knoblauch that there weren't enough forwards to receive those passes in tight spaces and get out of them. Getting a team that limited as far as he did, twice, will probably go down as some genius-level shit.

The obvious move here is the Oilers will go get Bruce Cassidy out of the TNT studio. Cassidy comes with the kind of resume that will get McDavid to notice, with a Final appearance with Boston, a Cup with Vegas, and a haul of 100+ point seasons. Except Knoblauch's resume now has two 100+ point seasons out of three, and two Final appearances, one being a whisker away from winning, and doing that with basically no goalie and no forward depth. This was a team counting on public bathroom runoff Corey Perry, for fuck's sake! Cassidy would be starting really close to the ceiling when looking for room to improve.

Looking over Cassidy's teams, in Vegas he had multiple gifted puck-movers, with Pietrangelo, Theodore, and a still breathing Alec Martinez. He had the same look in Boston. He had a crew of forwards that could play the heavy game he demanded. Is that what the Oilers are built to do? Once the game sped up on the Knights, they were ill-equipped, combined with the creeping age of the team. The league isn't going to slow down, and the Pacific has the Ducks and Sharks on the move already.

Cassidy, should he be the choice, will gather points. The Oilers will return to the playoffs. But he can't fix the holes they have from behind the bench. And that's if the Knights even let the Oilers talk to Cassidy, which they don't have to. They're playing silly games at the moment with that.

Doesn't it always seem like these things end the same way? LeBron went to Miami, then L.A. Brady ended up in Tampa. Gretzky in L.A., too. Perhaps the gravity of McDavid leaving and all that it entails is just too strong, and both sides are being reeled into it no matter how hard they try to escape.