Public griping over a lack of improvement under his watch had reached a fever pitch, so the Edmonton Oilers finally relented on Monday, giving in to the will of the people and firing the man responsible. Nope, not Kevin Lowe, he’s still the president of hockey operations. Craig MacTavish remains the team’s general manager, and Dallas Eakins is the head coach for the time being. They’re all safe, while goalie coach Frederic Chabot got the ax after five-plus seasons as the team’s goaltending guru.
As I wrote a couple weeks ago, Chabot is a convenient scapegoat but he didn’t have much to work with during his time in Edmonton. None of the goaltenders under his watch are currently NHL starting goaltenders, including Ben Scrivens and Viktor Fasth. Nikolai Khabibulin and Ilya Bryzgalov can’t find NHL work. Martin Gerber is playing in his Switzerland, while Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers is playing in Russia. Jason LaBarbera and Devan Dubnyk are currently NHL backups. Can we really blame Chabot?
Whether he deserves the blame or not, the Oilers have been atrocious between the pipes this season, so Chabot is out. Dustin Schwartz, who had served as the Edmonton Oil Kings’ goaltending coach since 2010, has replaced him as the man to mentor Edmonton’s goaltenders. That’s right, long-suffering Oilers fans, the team fired Chabot and replaced him with a guy from within the organization who doesn’t have any experience working with NHL netminders. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.
***Before I go any further, let me write this disclaimer. Schwartz appears to have done a good job for the Oil Kings, and he’s responsible for grooming Laurent Brossoit for success in the ECHL. I’m not saying that he can’t be successful in his current role. He could turn out to be an excellent coach and mentor for the Oilers, and I wish him the best of luck in a job that’s proven to be very difficult the last several seasons. The remainder of this blog is not an indictment of Schwartz or his coaching skill.***
Oilers management knows how important goaltending is, so I’m sure they did an extensive, league-wide search to find the best man for the job. After searching high and low, it’s a fantastic coincidence that not only did they hire someone who was already living in Edmonton, but coaching within the organization. Again, is it too much to ask that the Oilers hire the best person available? Was Schwartz on the radar of any other NHL team? No, not even close. So why would the Oilers choose him for the job?
For the Oilers, firing the goaltending coach amounts to throwing an oar into a sinking rowboat, but as we’ve seen many times before, this is a lazy hiring by an incompetent management team. At the very least, why wouldn't the Oilers hire someone who has had success at the NHL level before? I suppose that's just too much to ask. After all the failure the franchise has endured in recent years, someone in the organization should have put competence over familiarity, opting for proven experience.
Even if the Oilers didn’t know who the best person available was, they could have just followed the blueprint laid out by other successful teams. If the postseason started today, 12 of the 16 playoff teams employ a goaltending coach who played in the NHL. I’m not saying a guy had to stare down NHL shooters to be a successful coach, but the majority of the league’s best teams opt to go with former NHLers, including the Stanley Cup champions. If it works for them, it could work for the Oilers.
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