Edmonton, Alberta — Edmonton Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said on Wednesday that some of the team’s top stars were playing through injuries during their Stanley Cup playoff run.
The Oilers lost 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final to the Florida Panthers on Monday night.
“It’s obviously disappointing, it’s frustrating,” Leon Draisaitl said. “There’s only one team that can win, unfortunately. But I’m very proud of what we’ve been through this year.”
Knoblauch said Draisaitl had injuries that left the staff questioning whether he could play, while forward Evander Kane had a sports hernia and captain Connor McDavid was also playing hurt.
“Leon battled things throughout the playoffs – ribs, hands throughout the playoffs,” Knoblauch said. “At certain times it was worse than others. There were games we weren’t sure he was going to play. But he fought through it and played very well in those games.
“And then Evander with the sports hernia, something that’s been bothering him throughout the season. And it got to the point where it just limited his game. And unfortunately, we missed him.”
Knoblauch declined to comment on McDavid’s undisclosed injury, saying he didn’t have much information on the ailment.
McDavid led the playoffs with eight goals and 34 assists and won the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the playoffs.
“There were lots of happy moments throughout these playoffs, for sure,” he said. “A lot of great moments that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
The postseason’s top four scorers were all Oilers – including Draisaitl, Zach Hyman and defenseman Evan Bouchard.
“You often get defined on winning and winning that last game,” Knoblauch said. “We were so close to winning it. I think there were so many positives throughout the season that we should be happy about.”
The game capped a roller-coaster season that had Edmonton start with a 3-9-1 record, fire head coach Jay Woodcroft and install Knoblauch in his place.
Under the new bench boss, the Oilers went on a 16-game win streak and finished second in the Pacific Division with a 49-27-6 record.
“It was going to turn around no matter what. We had too good of players in that room to not score more goals and win more games,” forward Mattias Janmark said. “But I think, also, to become the team that we thought we were and that we needed to be, we needed to start doing things a little bit better, too.”
Several players hit major milestones, including McDavid, who had 100 assists, and Hyman, who scored 54 goals.
There are 10 unrestricted free agents on Edmonton’s roster, while the Oilers also have decisions to make on a pair of restricted free agents.
The club will also be able to sign extensions with some high-profile players starting Monday, including Draisaitl. But the German star said he hasn’t thought extensively about his future.
“I’m obviously going to sit down with my agent here, talk to the Oilers, see what their plan is, see what my plan is and go from there,” he said.
“I love being an Oiler more than anything.”
For now, Draisaitl and his teammates are simply taking time to process the highs and lows of their season.
The Oilers may not have won the Stanley Cup, but the team now believes they can get there, McDavid said.
“We’ve sat up here before and told you how bad we want to win and, looking back, we were miles away from it. And now we’re one shot away from it,” the captain said. “The belief has never been higher, not only within (Draisaitl and I), but within that room, within everybody.”
CHL-NTDP create prospects challenge
The Canadian Hockey League (CHL) and USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program (NTDP) announced the creation of the CHL USA Prospects Challenge over the next three years.
The CHL USA Prospects Challenge will see the top first-year NHL Draft-eligible prospects from the CHL’s three-member leagues – Western Hockey League (WHL), Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL)– face off against those from USA Hockey’s NTDP in a two-game series.
The first edition of this new event is set to take place in November 2024 with specific details on the date, location, and event format to come at a later date.
“The Canadian Hockey League is excited to partner with USA Hockey to add this one-of-a-kind event for both our players and fans to enjoy over the coming seasons,” said Dan MacKenzie, president of the CHL.
“Serving as a best-on-best showcase, the CHL USA Prospects Challenge will provide our top draft-eligible players from across the CHL with a great opportunity to demonstrate their elite talent and world-class skill set as they work towards hearing their name called at the NHL Draft.”
Maurice now has a Stanley Cup
Paul Maurice was once the last player picked in the NHL draft. An afterthought, almost. He never made it to the league as a player. And there were many times when he wondered if his name would ever be on the Stanley Cup.
Wonder no more.
It took 1,985 games, 939 wins, four different franchises, a team relocation, three times getting fired – twice by Carolina alone – and a semi-retirement to get him to this moment, one he’d dreamed about for most of his 57 years walking the planet and had never experienced until now.
It's over. Florida 2, Edmonton 1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final on Monday night was the last act of the lifetime quest. His name will be on Lord Stanley’s chalice. A lifetime of work now has checked the final box, now that the words “Paul Maurice” will soon be etched into a silver and nickel band for all the hockey world to see for decades to come.
“He’s the type of guy everybody respects and it’s because it’s earned,” Panthers forward Ryan Lomberg said. “He doesn’t expect people’s respect just because he’s the head coach. He does it the right way. He truly cares about each individual in this locker room and it goes a long way. So, yeah, we all respect him as much as possible.”
This was a void on Maurice’s resume, no question about it. Nobody has – well, now, change that to “had” – coached more games, won more games and coached more seasons without a Stanley Cup than Maurice. He was going to go down in history as a good coach, a veteran coach, a well-liked coach no matter whether he won a Cup or not.
And let's face it, had the Panthers not won Monday night and blown a 3-0 lead in the title series, it would have followed Maurice around forever. But now, whenever his career ends, they’ll have to call him a champion coach. The glaring hole has been filled.
“Literally, whatever he says, he means it,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “Going back to that first year when we had those tough moments in the regular season, he would give us the game plan and he would just say, ‘All right, it’s time to wake up.’ It would literally work almost every time. So that’s probably when we realized, ‘OK, you’ve got to listen to him.’”
As almost every hockey story that ends with the sport’s ultimate championship goes, this one began with Maurice as a little kid.
The memories, for him, go back to around the age of 5 growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 350 miles or so north of Detroit. They got three channels at his house: a French channel, CBC and WKBD out of Detroit. Saturday nights in season were hockey nights; they were either playing or skating or watching, without fail.
“My mom would make a pot of spaghetti or chili and we watched hockey,” Maurice said. “You knew that you were getting older because you could make it to the third period. That’s the way it was. My mom would make popcorn with a half-pound of butter. The half glass of co*ke you got was smeared with butter. There was salt everywhere.”
The early years, Maurice doesn’t remember much in the way of specifics. But by his mid-teens, in a bit of irony given who this Cup came against, Maurice was all about a pair of Oilers players – Wayne Gretzky and Paul Coffey. The reason: they both spent time in Sault Ste. Marie playing junior hockey on their way to the Oilers.
“They used to play street hockey sometimes in the tennis courts across the street from my house,” Maurice said. “My mom and dad still live there today. So, that was where it became the dream.”
He found himself rooting more for players than teams. Gretzky, the greatest ever. Coffey, an Oilers legend and now an Edmonton assistant coach. Lanny MacDonald. They hoisted Cup after Cup after Cup. The seeds were planted.
“The arduous pursuit of excellence,” Maurice said, “without the guarantee of reward.”
Little did he know how arduous the pursuit would be, or how difficult it would be to secure the greatest reward.
Maurice didn't go to the 1985 NHL draft in Toronto. He wasn't even paying much attention to it. Imagine his surprise when his mother called that night and said he'd been picked by the Philadelphia Flyers. Maurice started doing the math. The Flyers had the last pick in the draft, No. 252 of 252. That was him. And, oh, how his friends reveled in that.
“We were going to a bar and I had to do everything last,” Maurice said. “I got into the cab last, I got the last beer and I had to pick up the check because I was last. Friends. Close friends.”
After four years of playing in the Ontario Hockey League, Maurice decided to give coaching a shot. Five years as an assistant first, then two years as a head coach of what were then called the Detroit Junior Red Wings. He made it look easy. Made the finals his first year, won the title the next year and headed to the NHL’s Hartford Whalers as an assistant before getting promoted to head coach almost right away.
Coaching, suddenly, was no longer easy. In his first 19 NHL seasons, he either missed the playoffs or got fired in 14 of them. And when he stepped down in Winnipeg, nobody, not even Maurice, knew what was next. The rest is history. He started watching Panthers games and got smitten. A few months later, his phone rang. Maurice moved to Florida with a championship goal, one that was, at long last, realized Monday night.
“He was the fit,” Panthers president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito said.
Maurice is one of hockey’s personalities. He tells jokes. He’s sarcastic. He swears; some would say profusely, he would say he simply does it well. He likes to say he doesn’t do much, always points out that he knows nothing about goaltending, keeps his big speeches to a minimum.
“It can’t be about you as a coach,” Maurice said. “It’s about the room. It's about the players.”
On Monday night, it was about him. The last pick in the 1985 draft never saw the NHL as a player. He’s now atop it as a coach. Finally.
Dubois changes perspective quickly
The life Pierre-Luc Dubois envisioned for himself a year ago no longer exists.
Back then, he had requested and been granted a trade from Winnipeg to Los Angeles, signed a contract for $68 million over the next eight seasons and thought he would be a big part of the Kings' future.
Instead, Dubois endured a disappointing, underproductive season and was traded again last week to the Washington Capitals for goaltender Darcy Kuemper.
Dubois turned 26 on Monday and has already been traded three times since 2021. After the first and second were wanted by him, the latest forced him to change his perspective quickly upon joining his fourth NHL organization.
“I don’t think there’s any time for anybody to feel sorry about themselves,” Dubois said on a video call with reporters Wednesday, one year short of the anniversary of signing his current contract. “You learn in the hockey world teams will do what they think is better for their team, and there’s no hard feelings. For me, I could take it multiple ways, but I’m choosing to take it as extra motivation and to just get myself ready for next season.”
Dubois acknowledged he probably did not need more motivation after putting up just 40 points, the lowest of his career in a full, 82-game season. Kings general manager Rob Blake took responsibility for Dubois not being put in the right roles and the situation not being a great fit.
The trade gives Dubois, picked third by Columbus in the 2016 draft and traded to Winnipeg five years later for Patrik Laine and Jack Roslovic, another fresh start. Dubois is the Capitals' latest reclamation project, two summers after signing another center who was a No. 3 pick and already on his second team.
That one worked out swimmingly, with Dylan Strome establishing himself as an important part of Washington's evolving core in the final years of the Alex Ovechkin era. Strome and Dubois were actually roommates when they played together on Canada's world junior team in 2017.
“I’m sure that we’ll push each other, and he’ll teach me what he’s learned already,” Dubois said. “To be able to play with him again will be really fun and get to know him again. Obviously, we’re in different stages in life, but it’ll be exciting.”
Dubois is at the stage of trying to get back on track. On three previous occasions he scored 27 or more goals in a season, and GM Brian MacLellan when acquiring him said Dubois had immense potential to be a top-tier player because of his size, skating and hockey IQ – in part because he's expected to have a bigger role than in L.A.
“It was exactly what you want to hear as a player: How excited they are, how I can help in a lot of ways for this team," Dubois said of his first conversation with MacLellan. “You want to feel welcome. You want to feel like you’re a part of it.”
Hall of Famer Sather retires
Hockey Hall of Famer Glen Sather, who built and coached the NHL's last great dynasty with the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s and helped resurrect the New York Rangers in the early 2000s, is retiring after six decades in the sport as a player, coach and executive.
The Rangers announced the retirement on Wednesday, two days after the NHL season ended with the Panthers beating the Oilers in Game 7 for the franchise's first Stanley Cup. Coincidently, the Panthers knocked off the Rangers to win the Eastern Conference final.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman congratulated Sather on a remarkable career highlighted by five Cup wins in seven years by the Oilers.
“Whether with the dynastic Edmonton Oilers teams of the 1980s, the contending New York Rangers clubs of recent years or various iterations of Team Canada, Sather always showed a keen eye for elite talent and a deft touch for bringing out its best,” Bettman said in a statement.
“As important, he cared deeply about his players as people, sought to develop them as men and supported them through any off-ice challenges," he added.
Sather, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997 in the builder category, won five Stanley Cups as the Oilers' general manager. He was also the head coach for the first four of them, with John Muckler in charge for the last one in 1990.
“Having the opportunity to be associated with the National Hockey League, and specifically the New York Rangers and Edmonton Oilers, has been one of the great privileges of my life,” Sather said in a statement.
Known to most as “Slats,” Sather is one of two people in hockey history who won at least four Stanley Cups as both a head coach and a general manager. Punch Imlach of the Toronto Maple Leafs is the other.
Sather led Edmonton to Cup championships in 1984, ‘85, ’87, '88 and 1990. He served as a head coach in 932 NHL regular-season games with the Oilers and Rangers, compiling a record of 497-307-121-7.
In 126 Stanley Cup playoff games, Sather had a record of 89-37, and his .706 winning percentage in the playoffs is the best by any head coach in NHL history. He won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s Coach of the Year in 1985-86.
A feisty third and fourth-line player, Sather immediately joined the coaching ranks upon his retirement following the 1976-77 season. He led the Oilers to 12 straight WHA and NHL playoff appearances, bucking the NHL trend of playing defense first.
Acquiring Wayne Gretzky from a cash-strapped owner helped with that, and combining with scout Barry Fraser to draft Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, Jari Kurri, Andy Moog and Kevin Lowe in his first two years as general manager turned the Oilers into a powerhouse.
Sather served as Team Canada’s general manager and coach for the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. In addition, he guided Team Canada’s 1994 Canada Cup championship, and he was the GM of the gold medal-winning team in the 1994 world hockey championship.
Sather played for Boston, Pittsburgh, the Rangers, St. Louis, Montreal and Minnesota in a 10-year career. He had 80 goals and 113 assists along with 724 penalty minutes. He was a member of the 1971-72 Rangers team that advanced to the Stanley Cup Final.
At the time when Sather’s tenure as a general manager ended in July 2015, he held the NHL record for regular-season games (2,700) and regular-season wins (1,319) by a general manager.
Sather joined the Rangers in June 2000 as president and general manager. He served as president for his first 19 years and GM for the first 14 seasons. He also spent parts of two seasons as their head coach.
Over a 12-season span from 2005-06 to 2016-17, the Rangers were one of four NHL teams that reached the playoffs 11 times. In his final year as general manager in 2014-15, the team had 53 wins and 113 points – single-season franchise records at the time – and captured the Presidents’ Trophy for the third time.
