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Speculation » Who Replaces Knoblauch?

Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch? [message #850146 is a reply to message #850145 ]	Wed, 11 February 2026 16:19

Kr55
Messages: 12929
Registered: May 2002
Location: Edmonton

6 Cups

Adam wrote on Wed, 11 February 2026 15:16

Kr55 wrote on Wed, 11 February 2026 14:47

Adam wrote on Wed, 11 February 2026 12:11

Skookum Jim wrote on Wed, 11 February 2026 01:09

I think they give KK the end of the year to see how it shakes out.. the defensive coach(s) might be sweatin' though .. 😬
Friedman saying Coffey isn't comin'.. which I'm OK with.. Coffey was telling the D to "make plays" .. which leans more offense.. our D's problem is they can't make defensive plays if their careers depended on it.. only decent D man that can play defense effectively is Ekholm.. and our PK is bottom of the NHL.. not Coffey's territory.

There was apparently a lot of tension and dissent with Coffey there. That's not always productive.

That said, they've made some changes this year that clearly haven't worked. The coaching staff should be working double time to figure out what is going wrong and address it.

The unit last year and the year before was VERY good at suppressing chances. They were under-rated as a defensive unit but the stats suggested that they were strong defensively - just with mediocre netminding. This year, that's no longer the case. Goaltending is still pretty bad, but the defending also is way leakier. Not a good recipe.

Was the tension with the players or the other coaches? Other coaches, then there probably is a bigger issue here.

I'm hesitant to give Coffey all kinds of credit for being some kind of technical defensive hockey genius, but boy oh boy have our defensive metric fallen off a cliff this season. Is it what guys are being coached to do? Or is there a level of accountability that isn't being demanded this year vs the previos half decade or so.

Our defensive metrics are the worst they have been in a long time, before the age of Skinner. We are back to the Eakins days basically in the quality of chances we are allowing. Abd Eakins achieved that by telling guys to just not care about the slot and overload chasing pucks on the boards.

I'm not sure if these guys are determined to prove that Skinner was never the issue by just sabotaging everything about playing defensive hockey, or there is some other big issue happening that Coffey was helping address while he was here.

Rumour has it that there was lots of friction between Coffey and the coaching staff. Not sure about the players.

That's not THAT surprising. Coffey is a buddy of management and the owner and was not a Knoblauch hire, just as he wasn't a McLellan hire. McLellan hated him so much that he gave an anonymous and yet very obvious interview with Mark Spector, blasting the "Red Wine Summits" and talking about how little Coffey liked to do anything with the other coaches among all kinds of other gripes.

There is some player friction against Knoblauch as well though - some of the guys further down the lineup blaming him for their struggles. Frederic had some quote about hoping you don't get a whistle in the offensive zone or an icing or a TV timeout or anything, because you know you're coming off the ice then. And Derek Ryan, who was in the room last year, also piping in on that and saying if the depth guys don't get more of a defined role, then it's always just Connor & Leon's team.

Gregor did a comparison vs the other playoff teams in the West and our bottom-6 isn't getting significantly less minutes than any of the other teams, but they're scoring less. He didn't look at zone starts, but I suppose that could be a factor if they only ever start in D-zone or neutral ice. That said, their production is pretty miserable so hard to convince the coach that a winning strategy is putting them on the ice more.

I don't love that we have guys like Tomasek wanting out of here fast though. That definitely suggests there is something there and he felt there were things at play that were going to prevent him ever being successful here.

I wonder if some of the other teams don't go more power vs power and let the third lines play each other, especially against weaker opponents - leading to more offence? If you're giving young guys like Howard, Savoie, etc. no O-zone starts then it would be somewhat frustrating I'm sure. They want to produce but sometimes you have to spoonfeed guys a little bit to get them going. That doesn't really seem to be the case though if this is accurate:

https://www.nhl.com/nhl-edge/comparisons/skaters/David-Tomas ek-8485493/20252026/2/Isaac-Howard-8483455/20252026/2

Pretty even usage according to that. And Frederic's aren't much worse - 28% o-zone, 36 neutral, 35 d-zone.

I don't know. Something's wrong. The team is paying good money to a bunch of people to figure out what the hell it is.

Saddest thing with his team right now is McDavid has been absolutely on fire for almost 3 months straight now. I guess Bouch too offensively. Drai playing pretty well too. And almost no one else is along for the ride. The captain leading by example seems to mean absolutely nothing with this team.

Personally I think a lack of a 3rd line C that can actually make plays is a big handicap for our depth now. Henrique can barely do a thing 5v5 now. Roslovic is a winger, and plays like a winger even when he lines up at C. And there is nothing else. Nuge can't drive a line, so he just stays on the wing, and is having a pretty off year so far anyways. There is no good opportunity for these young wingers we have to learn their NHL game against medium/low end competition with a decent center. If they play with McDavid or Drai, they are going to be up against top comp, and think they are making it clear they can't handle it yet.

As for our defensive methods/results. Someone needs to figure something out there. The results are just abysmal.

5v5 GA/60 is our highest since 14/15, and it's not just bad luck. Last few years we had runs of being scored on like crazy when we weren't giving up lots of good chances, so our xGA was way lower than our actual GA. But this year, almost the same, we are getting pretty close to what we deserve based on the chances we're giving up.

There is no season going back to 2007 where our 5v5 xGA/60 was worse than it is this year. This is likely our worst xGA/60 season in the cap era right now. Somehow this team finds a way to battle any narrative about what could have been the problem with the team. Skinner sucks, yay, we got rid of him. Oh yeah? Well, let's play the crappiest defense ever now to try to prove Skinner was never the issue! Such an annoying team, seriously.

[Updated on: Wed, 11 February 2026 16:23]

"We need to get better immediately. That starts today"
- Lowe, 2013

"Next year I would forecast as another developmental year"
- MacT, 2015

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Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Wed, 04 February 2026 22:51
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: HamBlaster on Wed, 04 February 2026 22:56
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Wed, 04 February 2026 23:50
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: inverno76 on Thu, 05 February 2026 11:59
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: PlusOne on Sat, 07 February 2026 17:43
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Sat, 07 February 2026 18:33
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Sat, 07 February 2026 20:17
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Rocksteady on Mon, 09 February 2026 14:16
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Mon, 09 February 2026 14:30
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Tue, 10 February 2026 17:22
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Wed, 11 February 2026 01:09
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Wed, 11 February 2026 12:11
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Wed, 11 February 2026 14:47
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Wed, 11 February 2026 15:16
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Wed, 11 February 2026 16:19
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Wed, 11 February 2026 22:13
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Wed, 11 February 2026 22:35
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Wed, 11 February 2026 23:09
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Sat, 14 February 2026 18:34
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Sat, 14 February 2026 18:53
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Mon, 04 May 2026 13:03
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Tue, 05 May 2026 10:56
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Tue, 12 May 2026 08:30
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Rocksteady on Tue, 12 May 2026 12:05
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Tue, 12 May 2026 12:09
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Tue, 12 May 2026 12:28
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: nullterm on Tue, 12 May 2026 16:15
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Tue, 12 May 2026 16:34
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Skookum Jim on Tue, 12 May 2026 18:21
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Tue, 12 May 2026 21:46
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Tue, 12 May 2026 22:25
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Jay on Wed, 13 May 2026 09:07
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Kr55 on Wed, 13 May 2026 10:21
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Jay on Wed, 13 May 2026 21:24
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: inverno76 on Mon, 08 June 2026 13:39
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Jay on Mon, 08 June 2026 14:22
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: oilfan94 on Mon, 08 June 2026 14:59
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Rocksteady on Mon, 08 June 2026 15:56
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: NZ Oiler Fan on Mon, 08 June 2026 18:07
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: JPro on Mon, 08 June 2026 18:08
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Adam on Mon, 08 June 2026 23:20
Re: Who Replaces Knoblauch?	By: Rocksteady on Tue, 09 June 2026 10:49

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