Edmonton Oilers Head Coach Kris Knoblauch in conversation with Bob Stauffer (12/04/25)
Oilers now digital content is sponsored by Legacy Heating and Cooling. No payments and no interest for a year. That’s how you build a legacy. Chris, a return engagement uh tonight against the Seattle Kraken, one of the strongest performances of the season from your squad, a four- nothing victory Saturday afternoon in Seattle. Uh coming off a one- nothing loss against uh Minnesota where your team played pretty well. I really like the structure and process you played with. Are you starting in maybe in part because you’re getting some practices in, but are you starting to find a little bit uh more consistency in the structure and process that you’re playing with? Yeah, there’s a lot of things like and where our game is trending in the right direction. A lot of it has to do with one, we’re showing a little more urgency with the schedule and where we are in the standings that we have turned things around. That is one part of it. I think the biggest part of it is we’re also getting some practice time. First seven weeks we had very little. I think for seven weeks we had probably five or six practices. Um just the last two weeks we’ve had five practices. So I think that has a lot to do with it. Um and you know last few we have been playing pretty good hockey. Take out the Dallas game. We’ve been defending really well. Um going back to that Seattle game, we obviously got the shut out, but that game uh for me was determined with special teams. Um two for two on the power play, six for six on the PK. That’s definitely the difference within the game. You played for a coach at the University of Alberta who was a bit of a mentor of yours, Rob Dom, who knew how to breed offensive confidence in players. Uh how challenging is it when you’ve got two of the best offensive players on the planet, the two highest scoring players in the league since 2015, when you see Conor McDavid pass off shot options, uh shot opportunities in the slot because he’s such an unselfish player. Is that a conversation that coach can even or does he I mean obviously he knows too. He referenced it after the game but is that uh is that a conversation that takes place like shoot more? Yeah, we’d always like Connor shoot a little more but um every situation’s different and then those two that he passed up um you know if he does make that pass the uh probability of that puck going increases tremendously just from that. But anytime you see a shot that doesn’t get on net, you’re wanting that opportunity not to uh pass off without getting a chance to score. But if that pass is made, it’s a much more likelihood that puck’s going against. So, I don’t know. Conor’s um yes, we’d like him to shoot more, but I think more of the shots per game are going to go up when our team is playing better. We’re spending more time in the offensive zone. And another thing is a lot of his shots come off the power play. We haven’t gotten very many power plays. We’re averaging about two a game, especially the last couple weeks. And that is um affecting his shots per game. Chris, great stuff. Thanks for your time. Thank you.
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1 comment
That is why he is the Coach and a lot of you Keyboard kids are on here criticizing every move he makes.