Craig MacTavish is an articulate man who has always been

great in front of a TV camera. His brief stint on TSN as an analyst was

educating and his scrums as a coach were always interesting, plus you could

count on a great quote. It’s hurt him from time to time, though. Sometimes he

gives away too much of what he thinks privately about players and that can hurt

expectations and maybe even damage relationships. Perhaps he’s just too

comfortable speaking in front of the camera for his own good, because sometimes

he tips his hand and other times he can talk himself right into danger.

EXCITED MACT

I don’t doubt for a second that there’s a real rush of

adrenaline when there’s a camera pointed in your face and you are expected to

say something. For some people that sounds like a fate worse than death. For

others it’s a chance to take the spotlight and run with it. I’m pretty sure I

know which camp MacTavish belongs to. And that isn’t a knock. Some were born

for the stage. If MacTavish finished his hockey career and joined the TSN panel

fulltime I think we would be treated to excellent coverage. He’s a natural.

Still, there are times when some things are best left unsaid. Maybe it

was the excitement, the heat of the moment, but here are occasions where MacTavish

hurt himself (mainly just his credibility) by saying ridiculous things for no

reason.

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One of the first signs there wasn’t something quite right

with then Oilers Coach Craig MacTavish was when he likened NHL depth Center

Marty Reasoner to All-Star Joe Sakic. Check this piece for the whole context

but the money line is “If Marty had more speed, he’d be Joe Sakic.”

It’s actually impossible to be further apart than Marty Reasoner and Joe Sakic.

Marty Reasoner was basically playing the role of Boyd Gordon for the Oilers the

year of that quote. It would be effectively saying that a less physical Boyd

Gordon was a better stride away from being Malkin. I guess it probably made Reasoner

feel nice for a second, but in the long run it just makes both parties the punch

line of a joke.

Not every comment born of excitement is a positive one and

MacT has a wicked dark streak when it comes to his “honest assessment”. Here he

is ripping into Dustin Penner, a player who never looked like he was skating at

full speed. “When we signed Dustin we thought he’d be a top-two-line player. We

thought the contract ($4.25 million average for five years) was a starting

point for him, but he views it as a finish line. I can’t watch it, certainly

not for another 2 1/2 years.” Well then. That season Craig MacTavish had cut

down Penner’s minutes by two per game and there was no getting it back. Naturally

his overall offensive output dropped as a result but the fancies still liked

him. MacT ripped the player AND his contract despite the fact that Penner lead

the Oilers in Goals For percentage with a 60.3% that year (25th

highest in the NHL with 750 mins played). He was also second on the

team in raw Corsi percentage at 53.1% and Relative to his Teammates he was an

insane +7.5. And even though his scoring totals dropped that year, he was fourth

on the team in points/60 at Even Strength. He was outclassing the competition

and scoring well for his minutes but his coach refused to play him more while he

was doing it AND didn’t just rip the player but also spoke about his contract

too. Not his best moment.

This one classifies as a major gaffe too, even though the

player he was talking about would not go on to have a stellar NHL career. Sick

and tired of answering questions about why the team wasn’t calling up Rob

Schremp he unloaded a tirade about one of the organization’s top prospects

(at the time). “I guess every time we call somebody up we’ve got to

explain why it’s not Robbie, but the bottom line is it’s up to Robbie to be a

decent player down there. We all know what he can do, he’s got decent hands, he

can work a power play okay, but he’s slow, he’s not a physical player, he’s

soft at this level. There are a lot of things in his game he needs to address

before he becomes that player who gets called up. It’s getting to the point

where you’ve gotta be honest: he’s not helping them particularly down there

right now and there’s no reason to think he’ll be able to come up here and help

us.”

These are things you just can’t say to the media as a had

coach. Even the ones that aren’t under your direct mentorship are still your

responsibility. The kid he was talking about was still an Oiler when the head

coach of the NHL club went on record saying he was slow and soft. As great as

that quote was, there’s no telling what it did to Rob Schremp’s development. Along

those lines you also have to wonder what it did to the confidence of Devan

Dubnyk when MacT questioned openly his ability to be a number one goalie in this

league.

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The most obvious over-excited moment to happen recently was

the proclamation that Justin Schultz had Norris potential. “I really believe

that he’s going to be a player that is going to be counted on at both ends and

will be equally effective in the defensive zone. I think the potential there is

absolute, I think Justin has Norris Trophy potential. I don’t think there are

too many people that would disagree with me in that regard.” That statement is so wrong that it takes time to digest just how incorrect it

really is. And just to get a clear understanding of context, you also have to

remember that Justin Schultz was just coming off of a very disappointing full

season in the NHL when MacT said it.

There was absolutely no reason to say those words in any

combination. Justin Schultz needs more time learning how to play the NHL game.

He is, very slowly, learning how not to be a complete trainwreck in his own

zone. MacTavish very unfairly set this kid up to be the butt-end of jokes about

ineptitude for a generation. It’s also clear from the ice time doled out at the

beginning of the year that the mandate was to give minutes to Justin Schultz.

The Oilers were going to prove just how good Schultz was by making sure he was

seeing as much ice as the league’s all-stars. They doubled down on this insane statement

instead of putting their inexperienced defender in a position to succeed.

DEFENSIVE MACT

Excited MacT gives the best quotes, no question, but

Defensive MacT is the one that really makes you scratch your head. This year

more than any people have fairly questioned his erratic decision making and his

role in building one of the worst teams in the NHL despite preaching how they

would be competitive before the season began.

In the summer you, me, and anybody who could count to two

had a problem with the center depth the Oilers were going into the year

with. The best case scenario was the rookie would contribute like a veteran 2C,

which would unquestionably put him in the Calder conversation. When pressed

about that depth and Leon specifically, MacT said this: “Anybody, whether fan,

coach, manager, media, anybody that says that they can tell you definitively

whether Leon Draisaitl is ready or is not ready before getting the information

at training camp is naïve. That would reveal a very superficial understanding

of the game of hockey. Fortunately, we don’t have to make that decision right

now. In my mind, I feel he’s going to make a strong case.”

Just to be clear, it was naïve of you to question the merits

of keeping the 2C spot of an NHL team open for an 18 year old to earn against

minimal competition. Only those with a superficial understanding of the game

would have a problem with this scenario. Also, despite having secured no other

options at center, he apparently believed that he didn’t have to make the

decision to keep Draisaitl or not in August. The reality was (if I may be so naïve)

that the decision was already made. There were no other options.

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Naturally with that setup the team did terribly and in early

December the knives were coming out. When asked why the fans should trust the same management team that built this mess to get them out of the weeds, MacT

was quick to deflect blame. “I’ve been on the job for 18 months. I coached the

team here for (eight seasons, from 2000-09), but I had nothing to do with

management. Don’t (lump) me in with a situation of power and influence in the

management level in this organization. I’ve been on the job for 20 months.” 18

months, 20 months, if I’m performing as terribly at my job as MacTavish has

been at his then I would have been lucky to make it three months. There was

absolutely no acknowledgement of culpability on the part of the Oilers General

Manager. His coach, his players, his philosophy, his mandate to be bold all

tattered and in pieces around him and we got the “Hey, I’m just new here!”

defense from the man in charge.

Contrast his denial of guilt with the quickness he has been

ready to claim praise belonging to others. He can’t even give Todd Nelson

credit without making sure he says that he was also responsible for the turnaround. “The easy conclusion for me to come to would be that it’s strictly

a coaching change. And Todd certainly deserves to a lion’s share of the credit

for that, but there’s been personnel moves in my mind that have really helped.

So I don’t want to lay this at the feet of a Dallas or a Todd issue. It’s more

complicated than that.” The Oilers that Nelson inherited had David Perron

removed, and Hall, Nikitin, and Pouliot (on and off) injured. The only real

positive additions were the additions of Roy and Klinkhammer, a center on his way

out of the NHL and a journeyman winger!

These are the moments that good management don’t try to take

credit for. It doesn’t look good when you say, “This team competes better now

that I added something that we should have had four months ago but I didn’t think

was necessary.” And it definitely doesn’t look good when you try to hijack the

credit that your employees deserve. Craig MacTavish, it seems, is not very good

at handling criticism or accepting blame, and there also appears to be an issue

assigning credit.

DOES THIS MATTER?

These last two years have been a series of disasters and we’re

looking to find out if the structure is in place to correct the wrongs. MacT is

the man leading the charge for the Oilers. The failures of the team fall at his

feet when everything is said and done, and yet despite being responsible for

the lion’s share of the blame he has deflected it all towards others.

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The Oilers only started to turn around when the coach Craig

MacTavish supported vehemently was let go. The culture of the room only started

when the man MacT passed over once before and refuses to give full credit to

took over behind the bench. Table Tennis, harder practices, Nail Yakupov,

Jordan Eberle, ill-fitting suits, Pontiac Firebirds, and a relaxed attitude don’t come back into

the Oilers’ world if MacTavish isn’t forced to abandon his plan with the head

coach.

The roster is about to take a severe hit because Craig MacTavish

effectively chose Nikitin and Schultz last summer over Jeff Petry. David Perron

was vocal about not getting enough ice time and he was moved along for it. We

can only wonder how his statements about Dubnyk affected the goalie’s

confidence before entering into an unimaginable tailspin. He has a history of making inflammatory statements about his own players

that serve no other purpose than breaking down their confidence or setting unrealistic expectations upon them.

So mistakes were made, but the opportunity to learn from

them only happens when those mistakes are recognized and acknowledged. My issue

is that we haven’t seen him do anything like that. We’ve seen him chortle at

the thought that he should be lumped in with the group responsible for

decimating the franchise. We’ve seen him accuse others of being unsophisticated

for questioning the readiness of Leon Draisaitl for the position of 2C in the

NHL. We’ve seen him dodge the suggestion that his preferred coach was the wrong

choice and that the new one is a better fit.

So is Craig MacTavish the right person to lead Edmonton back

to respectability? Well if you have to ask the question…



