Losing the Stanley Cup Finals is bad enough. Losing it twice in a row? That’s one blow you’d take a lifetime to recover from. However, Kris Knoblauch doesn’t have all that time on his hands. The seasoned NHL coach has one year left with the Edmonton Oilers, and he wants to make sure the Western Conference powerhouse makes the 2025-26 season as memorable as possible. With that in mind, Knoblauch reveals that changes are in order.
After losing to the Florida Panthers in Game 6 last month, the Oilers’ boss was understandably devastated. “There’s no silver lining to this,” he brooded afterward. However, it seems like Knoblauch is unwilling to leave things to fate and instead is making it a personal mission for himself to help the team bounce back. To that goal, things are being shaken up for better results in the coming season.
Kris recently talked to reporters via a virtual call to talk about how the Oilers camp is revamping itself in order to have a better shot at winning the Cup next season. In a YouTube upload by the official Edmonton Oilers account from Monday, Knoblauch confessed how the team’s penalty kill has been subpar in the 2024-25 season and how that could change soon.
On being asked if Edmonton will fare better in terms of penalty kills in the upcoming season, given that the responsibility of the coaching in that department still will be undertaken by former NHL defenseman Mark Stuart, Knoblauch admitted that conversations about penalty kills have been a dominant point of discussion throughout the season. Acknowledging that penalty kills have been poor in the playoffs, the coach said, “There will be changes to our system. We will be doing things a little bit differently…There’s a lot of conversations, a lot of analyzing what other teams are doing, and then having those conversations within the coaching staff and moving forward. So, I know Mark Stewart has started that process.”
The story is developing
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