“Mutual Agreement”

Michael Sciarpelletti

End of an Era

It was at 12:05 PM on a sunny Wednesday afternoon when eight years of Craig MacTavish as the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers was brought to an end by Steve Tambellini who at that moment announced that MacT was to no longer be the head coach of the Oilers.

Both here and everywhere across the internet and media the sentiment remained the same: MacT would be moved aside politely in favour of taking the team in a new direction.

Tambellini showed some fire and bashed the team’s efforts this year, hinting that changes would not end at MacTavish, leading me to believe that Huddy and Moores could also be ousted before the team hits the ice come next season.

Rob Daum could very well be brought back up as an assistant coach, and has been named as a “possible” on a number of different occassions both by media close to the team and by members of the team as well.

But at the end of the day, there are a lot of suggestions for who could be the next Oil bench boss.

These range from whacky (Pat Quinn) to exciting (Brent Sutter) to scary (Marc Crawford).

Whomever the Oilers pick, expect it to be someone that they know in their heads to be someone that can turn around a dressing room that seems to be falling apart.

Souray Mayday

Rumors that Sheldon Souray could possibly request a trade soon or that he has already done so have been running rampant, and one should not ignore these rumors, because he has been considering it.

He has been conversing with his agent, but now feels that since MacT is gone that he would rather wait and see, but certainly shows that there is unrest in the dressing room.

Smid is another play that the Oilers are going to need to figure out what they want to do with, because if the rumours regarding the Oilers are planning on trading one of their defensemen are true it sounds to me as though Smid might just be getting the trade that he requested in this past off-season.