Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

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TDA Rum
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Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by TDA Rum »

Craig Mactavish leaves Wolves to pursue other opportunities..
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Eddy Punch Clock
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by Eddy Punch Clock »

He was probably counting on AV getting fired at some point this season.
2011..... the one that got away.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by CaptainTrev »

...re-joins Oilers organization.

http://oilers.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id= ... L|EDM|home

Dammit! He's like a double-agent.....left the Coilers just long enough to scout all our best prospects...think of what that evil genius TambeLoweni will be able to do with such info!

:lol:
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by ESQ »

I always felt like MacT was only ever given a shot as an NHL coach because of the dynasty in Edmonton. Somewhat surprised that they're giving him an office job though...
I'm not sure this is the move Edmonton fans were waiting for to give them some hope for actual improvement on the ice.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by CaptainTrev »

ESQ wrote:I always felt like MacT was only ever given a shot as an NHL coach because of the dynasty in Edmonton.
There's definitely been an old-boys club thing going on around there for a while - Ron Low, Kevin Lowe, Steve Smith, Kelly Buchberger, Charlie Huddy, Craig MacTavish. Pretty sure I'm forgetting a few more.

You'd think they'd have figured out that it's not working....oh right, one half of their two-headed GM disaster is one of the old boys. Guess that explains it.

I, for one, am more than happy to watch them go back to the "glory days" well time after time, since it keeps them spinning their wheels in the here and now.
"Perhaps there is no moral to this story."

"Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened."
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Eddy Punch Clock
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by Eddy Punch Clock »

Glad we snagged Arniel up when we did.
2011..... the one that got away.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by herb »

CaptainTrev wrote:There's definitely been an old-boys club thing going on around there for a while - Ron Low, Kevin Lowe, Steve Smith, Kelly Buchberger, Charlie Huddy, Craig MacTavish. Pretty sure I'm forgetting a few more.
Craig Simpson was an assistant coach there as well before he moved to broadcasting.

Oilers fans definitely can't be excited with the way that organization is being run. Hard to see how that management group is going to be capable of rounding out that roster with any kind of depth. Extending Tambellini with a massive contract extension, and bringing back Mac-T are hardly moves to get excited about.

It did appear as though Mactavish was the coach in waiting. I for one am happy that we won't be seeing him as coach of the Canucks.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by BladesofSteel »

OTOH, MacT and Lowe did build a team who went to the finals. While Tamby and KL have enjoyed a great deal of success on the National stage.

I wouldn't be concerned if I were an Oiler fan. Two of the three members of the management group have more hardware on their fingers than most managers have combined. They know as much as anyone what it takes to build a winner.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by CaptainTrev »

BladesofSteel wrote:OTOH, MacT and Lowe did build a team who went to the finals. While Tamby and KL have enjoyed a great deal of success on the National stage.
True enough. But OTOOH, the Oilers proceeded to faceplant their way to a 71-point season the next year, starting a run of 6 straight seasons (and counting) out of the playoffs.

To be fair Lowe did get screwed over by Pronger at the time. But counting the miracle Cup run, the Oilers have only made 3 playoff appearances in the last 10 seasons, and even then they only managed to finish 6th, 8th, and 8th in the West (all under Lowe as GM). I think that's pretty good evidence that their '06 team could qualify as the ultimate one-off.

Well, maybe the '06 Canes have 'em beat....figuratively speaking of course :mrgreen: I haven't looked at their numbers but off the top of my head I know that their Cup-winning core just made the ECF a couple of seasons ago.

Point is, I hope the bumblef*ck of a management crew the Coilers have going keeps it up :mrgreen:

Thus ends my Schadenfreude rant for the day :D
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by Fred »

I hate it when a Canuck player/management goes to a division rival and what he takes with him in knowledge
cheers
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by donlever »

I see what you are cookin' there Fred but Tambellini was here umpteen years.

Did his defection have a real detrimental effect on our operation?

Mac T was here 1 year.

Meh is it?
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by dbr »

As someone with first-hand experience of how an AHL-calibre franchise is run, MacT is definitely in a position to help the Oilers.

..

Reading CaptainTrev's list of Oilers successes over the last decade plus, it's hard to believe they've effectively had a single GM over that time.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by mpp »

Eddy Punch Clock wrote:Glad we snagged Arniel up when we did.
Exactly. I'm betting he's the new coach.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by ESQ »

BladesofSteel wrote:I wouldn't be concerned if I were an Oiler fan. Two of the three members of the management group have more hardware on their fingers than most managers have combined. They know as much as anyone what it takes to build a winner.
Have to disagree with you there - their hardware is from playing on the most insanely stacked team of all time with the best player of all time. Full props for winning the Cup without Gretzky, but that team was still ridiculous. I would be highly concerned if I were an Oilers fan.

In my opinion Kevin Lowe has done nothing in 12 years as GM/President to warrant any confidence in his abilities.
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Re: Mactavish Leaves Wolves...

Post by Fred »

Interesting read in Canucks army
Craig MacTavish Steps Down as Wolves Head Coach

Thomas Drance
June 11 2012 11:39AM

It has been announced today that the Canucks and Craig MacTavish, a team employee who was the head-coach of Vancouver's AHL affiliate club the Chicago Wolves, are parting ways. Craig MacTavish has stepped down to "pursue other opportunities" and in particular, other opportunities in the Edmonton Oilers front-office.


It had been speculated that Mac-T was preparing to re-join the Edmonton Oilers, albeit not in a head-coaching capacity, and sure enough only moments after the news broke that he was stepping down in Chicago, the Oilers confirmed that MacTavish will join the organization as the Senior VP of Hockey Operations.

Here are Mike Gillis' comments from the official media release on Canucks.nhl.com:


“Craig brought a tremendous amount of experience and expertise as Head Coach of the Wolves this past season,” said Mike Gillis. “We were pleased to have him as a member of our organization and wish him continued success in the future.”


Craig MacTavish led the Wolves to a 44-27-4 record this past season, as the team won their division but were eliminated in the first round of the Calder Cup Playoffs by Laurence Gilman's former club, the San Antonio Rampage. The Wolves, under Mac-T's guidance, were something of a "typical" MacTavish team - stingy in their own end and stifling on the penalty-kill, they were also challenged offensively and their power-play production was rather limited.


In the past, the Canucks and their AHL affiliate clubs in Manitoba played the same basic system. Former Moose coaches, for example, tend to closely echo Vigneault's extreme zone based deployment schemes when they graduate to fully fledged NHL coaches, which, suggests a sophisticated level of institutional co-ordination between the NHL club and their past AHL affiliates.


It's my observation - and granted I only watched a handful of Wolves games this past season, and covered one live - that this changed somewhat this past season. The Wolves shirked a modified Umbrella formation on the power-play (and didn't regularly use Newell Brown's patented delayed, drop-pass zone entry), worked in an aggressive box rather than a more passive one on the penalty-kill, and didn't match lines at even-strength with any sort of Vigneault-esque obsessiveness.


In addition to this, I think it's fair to point out that certain young players and in particular undrafted free agent signees Darren Archibald and Sebastian Erixon, may not have been granted the same types of opportunities in Chicago this past season that the likes of Eddie Lack and Chris Tanev were given in Manitoba. Granted, Tanev and Lack are both singularly talented prospects, but Darren Archibald spent much of the season in the ECHL, while Sebastian Erixon was a fixture in the press box, became quickly unhappy with his situation, and was traded at the deadline. In fairness, while fringe prospects like Archibald and Erixon struggled with Mac-T at the helm, guys like Kevin Connauton and Jordan Schroeder put together career years, and noticeably improved their two-way game.


When MacTavish was initially hired, it was widely thought that his presence would serve to put oft-embattled head coach Alain Vigneault's feet to the fire. It certainly seems as if that never really happened, even though the Wolves season was a qualified success.


So, now we'll await the naming of a new Chicago Wolves head-coach. The Canucks' AHL affiliate has a rich history of churning out big league head-coaches, with names like Alain Vigneault, Randy Carlyle, Claude Noel and Scott Arniel all having coached in Manitoba relatively recently. This is purely speculative, but I'd single out Scott Arniel as an intriguing name - he's got NHL head-coaching experience, a level of familiarity with the Canucks organization and he's currently out of work. While he floundered in difficult circumstances in Columbus, the Blue Jackets' underlying numbers were significantly better than the team's record, and I'm not sure one can blame him for the goaltending.
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