This morning the Edmonton Oilers announced that Jeff Jackson had been appointed as the new CEO of Hockey Operations for the Edmonton Oilers. Jeff Jackson is an NHL agent working for Wasserman Hockey as Executive Vice President.
Before this announcement, there were a lot of people that thought perhaps the Edmonton Oilers would promote Ken Holland and then backfill Holland’s GM role with someone internally. Most people thought that the internal candidate was going to be Steve Staois. This now wonders what will happen to those two once Ken Holland’s contract is up.
OEG Inc. Owner & Chairman Daryl Katz announces Jeff Jackson has been named the new #Oilers CEO of Hockey Operations.
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) August 3, 2023
Who is Jeff Jackson?
Jackson is currently the agent for many big-name NHL players. The main of of course is Connor McDavid. Other players include Alex Debrincat, Aaron Ekblad and newly signed Oilers forward Connor Brown.
He was at one time the Assistant General Manager and Director of Hockey Operations for the Toronto Maple Leafs, so he does have experience in managing a hockey team in the high-pressure locations that are Canadian markets.
What Does This Mean For The Edmonton Oilers?
The thing that this does for the Edmonton Oilers is it takes some workload off other people and gives it to Jeff Jackson. Ken Holland will now be able to focus most of his time and energy on being an NHL GM and not having to split his time with as much Hockey Operations anymore as there is now CEO.
It isn’t that Ken was doing a bad job, but I now wonder how much of a better job he will now be able to do now that more of his time will be pushed into doing General Manager work.
All in all, I don’t expect this move to have much of an effect on what we will see on the ice in the coming NHL season, but when it comes to picking people in hockey management roles in the future it will all be up to Jeff Jackson.