{"id":463255,"date":"2026-02-19T10:52:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/463255\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:52:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T10:52:51","slug":"paul-coffey-hired-back-to-coach-edmonton-oilers-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/463255\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Coffey hired back to coach Edmonton Oilers defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

This in, the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> have hired back Paul Coffey to coach their defence.<\/p>\n

NHL insider Frank Seravalli @frank_seravalli
Back in North America: Paul Coffey has re-joined Oilers coaching staff.<\/p>\n

Brenden Escott @BrendenEscott
Coffey is back behind the Oilers bench.
\u201cI\u2019m excited to return and work alongside Kris and the entire staff,\u201d Coffey said. \u201cWith 24 games left in the season, there is ample time to build on the many positives and build momentum for another long playoff run.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fourth Period\u2019s David Pagnotta @TheFourthPeriod
Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch: \u201cI have been in regular contact with Paul since last summer and I believe we will benefit both as a team and as a staff from his return at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

WHL hockey scout Dan Tencer @dantencer
I think it\u2019s impossible to overstate how big losing Coffey and Gulutzan was. Just a ton of experience and knowledge from Coffey and Gulutzan had as elite a resume as you could have as a 2nd in command. This is a very good step.<\/p>\n

The Edmonton Journal\u2019s Jim Matheson @jimmathesonnhl
As we wrote several weeks ago Oilers need Coffey back to coach defence. Good move. Now they need to trade for another veteran D too\u2026Paul Coffey was hesitant to become an NHL coach in November 2023 when an advisor to owner Daryl Katz but he grew to love being back in action. He is good at it and he pushed a lot of right buttons in his two years. Now he is back with Oilers stumbling\u2026Coffey is the defence whisperer for Oiler group. Mark Stuart is very good coach but Coffey has sauce that seems to work with the back-end. His first task. Getting to Darnell Nurse to simplify his game.<\/p>\n

My take<\/p>\n

The Oilers have been about half a goal better per game with Coffey as coach.<\/p>\n

The Oilers created 13.8 Grade A shots and gave up 12.2 Grade A shots per game before Coffey was hired in November 2023.<\/p>\n

With him, they created 15.7 Grade A shots per game and give up 11.8.<\/p>\n

Since he left last summer, 15.8 for 13.9 against.<\/p>\n

I had pushed hard for this move to be made in a Cult of Hockey post on November 7 when it was clear the Oil\u2019s defence group had crashed after Coffey\u2019s departure last spring. More recently my Edmonton Journal colleague Jim Matheson\u00a0 suggested on several occasions that Coffey should be rehired.<\/p>\n

There had been a remarkable improvement in the play of almost every Oilers d-man after Coffey took over from former d-man coach David Manson in November 2023, and there had been a marked collapse of the two-way play of the d-men without Coffey earlier this fall.<\/p>\n

With Coffey in charge of the defence, the d-men helped create Grade A shots at a higher rate and they leaked fewer Grade A shots against. Evan Bouchard, Brett Kulak, Mattias Ekholm and Darnell Nurse were all better under Coffey than they were under Manson before.<\/p>\n

Since I wrote that Nov. 7 post, the two-way play of Bouchard, Ekholm and Nurse has improved immensely under Stuart. At the same time, however, three defencemen have crashed when it comes to keeping the puck out of the Edmonton net. Jake Walman, Spencer Stastney and Alec Regula have all leaked Grade A shots, 5-alarm shots and goals against.<\/p>\n

Stastney and Regula are both hard-working players with some NHL skills. Stastney can really skate. Regula can move the puck and is a big d-man with a huge wingspan and sound positional instincts. But neither young-ish d-man has been able to get it done defensively in Edmonton. Both have struggled, both leaking Grade A shots, 5-alarm shots and goals against. The same goes for Walman, who was so good in the 2025 playoffs. He\u2019s been banged up, but when he has played, he\u2019s made all kinds of bad decisions and bad plays leading to that unwanted big three of defensive hockey: Grade A shots, 5-alarm shots and goals against.<\/p>\n

I recently wrote that to fix this mess Edmonton needs to bring in at least one solid veteran d-man at the deadline as their top trade priority. But a smarter option is bringing back Paul Coffey. It doesn\u2019t cost cap space and draft picks to do that. And it might ultimately be the best decision to bring about major positive change for players like Stastney, Walman and Regula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This in, the Edmonton Oilers have hired back Paul Coffey to coach their defence. NHL insider Frank Seravalli…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5125],"tags":[4059,2377,3592,1809,42394,198,23660,146,5300,425,2197,5,3144,24095,22265,868,4,24,2703,9700],"class_list":{"0":"post-463255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edmonton-oilers","8":"tag-alec-regula","9":"tag-assistant-coach","10":"tag-brett-kulak","11":"tag-darnell-nurse","12":"tag-david-manson","13":"tag-edmonton","14":"tag-edmonton-journal","15":"tag-edmonton-oilers","16":"tag-edmontonoilers","17":"tag-evan-bouchard","18":"tag-frank-seravalli","19":"tag-hockey","20":"tag-jake-walman","21":"tag-jim-matheson","22":"tag-mark-stuart","23":"tag-mattias-ekholm","24":"tag-nhl","25":"tag-oilers","26":"tag-paul-coffey","27":"tag-spencer-stastney"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116096925939750573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}