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Edmonton Oilers Fire Goaltending Coach To ‘Fix’ Things

By Catherine Silverman

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Edmonton Oilers announce Monday that goalie consultant Frederic Chabot has been let go

On Monday morning, Edmonton Oilers general manager Craig McTavish finally made the big announcement everyone had been waiting for.

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According to the Edmonton Journal, the team has let goaltending consultant Frederic Chabot — who has been with the club since 2009 — go, replacing him with Dustin Schwartz. Schwartz.

Prior to his appointment with the Oilers, Schwartz was the goaltending consultant for the 2014 Memorial Cup-winning Edmonton Oil Kings of the WHL.

The announcement was made on the heels of the team’s sixth consecutive loss, a 7-1 beating delivered at the hands of the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Edmonton Oilers aren’t the worst team in the NHL — but they’re second only to the Buffalo Sabres, who are still in the early stages of a complete team rebuild.

The Oilers are 6-13-2 on the season so far; with zero wins against their fellow Pacific Division rivals and a whopping -25 goal differential, they’re barely hanging on. It’s considered a very real possibility that the franchise is already out of the running for a playoff spot — they sit a full ten points outside of the final playoff spot right now, and the season is already a quarter over.

Following the announcement, Edmonton’s starting netminder, Ben Scrivens, expressed how upset he was by the move. He, in addition to forward Taylor Hall, insists that the players are hugely to blame for the way the season is going. He didn’t even try to defend himself or his teammates when Oilers fans booed the skaters after their loss to Chicago.

"“We deserved absolutely everything we got on that walk,” Scrivens told Sportsnet’s Mark Spector."

Scrivens himself is one of six netminders who started with the club last season; one of those, Devan Dubnyk, has met with immediate success in his new home with the Arizona Coyotes. Many have suggested that Arizona’s goalie coach, former player Sean Burke, has helped the team see the post-season with his stellar coaching before; it seems the Oilers are hoping to find a mentor of the same caliber to fix things.

While many hope this will at least inject some life into the Edmonton franchise, this isn’t exactly the solution most had been calling for. Goaltending has been less than perfect for the Oilers, but the stats all over the ice look no better; the team has struggled to play good defense, prevent takeaways, and even block shots. The offense doesn’t look good together, and the mountain of top prospects on the ice sum up to nothing more than a clunky top-six offense and a concern that the team has ruined their chance for player development.

The Oilers will get their first test after making the change on Tuesday, as they face off against the Dallas Stars in Texas.

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