Edmonton Oilers Remove Interim Tag From Jay Woodcroft

The Edmonton Oilers have signed Jay Woodcroft to a 3 year contract.

After turning the Edmonton Oilers around last season, head coach Jay Woodcroft will be around for the next while after signing a 3 year contract.

The Edmonton Oilers have made it official this morning with the signing of Jay Woodcroft. When Woodcroft took over this team, the team was out of a playoff spot and was not playing very good.

After Woodcroft took over the Edmonton Oilers record was 26-9-3. That was enough to take the team from out of a playoff spot and propel them into second place in the Pacific Division. Then after that he led them to a Western Conference Final showing.

Moving Forward

Moving forward from here I think Woodcroft will be able to improve this team even more. He will be able to have a voice with Ken Holland when it comes on players to bring in and who to keep. He will also have more time to put in his plan.

When Woodcroft took over the Edmonton Oilers were on the stretch drive with a very tight schedule. In that time there was very little time to hold a practice and when it got to playoffs there was even less time as the team needed rest.

For the upcoming season he will have a whole preseason to implement the plans and schemes. The players will have lots of practice time and preseason games to learn them and by the time the regular season starts this team will have become fully Woodcroft’s team.

Assistant

At this point there is still no word on what the future of the assistant and position coaches. I think this will land more on the choice of Woodcroft as opposed to Holland. So now that Woodcroft’s future is secure he can start looking at which coaches he wants to work with.

I am going to think that most of them will stay around. The one coach who may not be returning is Glen Gulutzan. This is one of the assistants that were here before Woodcroft and was not appointed by Jay.

There is going to be a media availability tomorrow morning and hopefully there will be more news at that time.