Edmonton, AB (Sports Network) – After only one season behind the bench, the Edmonton Oilers have fired Ralph Krueger.<\/p>\n
Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday evening. The 53-year-old Krueger was let go less than a year since the club welcomed him as the new bench boss back on June 27, 2012 with a three-year contract.<\/p>\n
“I want to acknowledge a tremendous commitment Ralph had to our players and staff in his three years with this organization,” MacTavish stated.<\/p>\n
The Oilers, who finished with a 32-40-10 record for 74 points in 2011-12 under Tom Renney, went 19-22-7 during the past campaign, good enough for third place in the Northwest Division but still unable to snag a playoff berth.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to hire an assistant coach, an associate coach who was a veteran. During the process of me conducting those interviews, I recognized I tried to add a coach that was more closely aligned to how I wanted to run the team than what Ralph was looking for,” added MacTavish. “It wasn’t an easy decision, I stand by that decision and I will be judged by that decision.”<\/p>\n
MacTavish later stated that he intended to “turn over the keys” of the club to a new head coach and coaching staff by the time training camp begins on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n
Krueger had been an associate coach for the Oilers for two years prior to his elevation to the head coaching position. He spent time with the Carolina Hurricanes as a scouting consultant and also served as coach of Switzerland’s men’s ice hockey team from 1997 through the conclusion of the 2010 Olympics, guiding them to a sixth-place finish at the 2006 Winter Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Edmonton, AB (Sports Network) – After only one season behind the bench, the Edmonton Oilers have fired Ralph Krueger. Oilers general manager Craig MacTavish made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday evening. The 53-year-old Krueger was let go less than a year since the club welcomed him as the new bench boss back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}