Stan Bowman has reportedly chosen the Oilers' next head coach
Peter Laviolette is being floated as the next head coach of the Edmonton Oilers, and the timing tells you everything about where Stan Bowman is leaning.
The buzz hit social media Tuesday morning, with hockey insider account Hockey 24|7 posting bluntly that Laviolette looks "Edmonton bound."
No deal, no announcement, no press conference. Just a name attached to a job that's been open since the playoffs ended.
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And make no mistake, that bench is open.
Bowman, the GM hired in July 2024, is the one making this call. His first major hire as the man running the show in Edmonton.
The pressure is obvious. The Oilers went 41-30-11 in the regular season, finished second in the Pacific, then got bounced in six games by Anaheim in the first round.
What a Laviolette hire would actually solve in Edmonton
Connor McDavid played six playoff games. He scored once. He finished a -8.
Evan Bouchard, the franchise blueliner, posted a -7. Zach Hyman managed two goals and zero assists across the series. The top end of the roster disappeared.
That's the room Laviolette would be walking into. A locker room with a generational center who just got outscored on home ice by a wild-card Ducks team.
The structural issues run deeper. Edmonton's team save percentage was a mess all year, with Tristan Jarry at .882 and Connor Ingram at .898 across the regular season.
Bowman can't fix the crease with a coaching hire. But he can change what happens in front of it, and Laviolette has built reputations on tightening defensive structure before.
Is Laviolette the right voice for a McDavid era running out of runway? That's the question Bowman has to answer, and quickly.
Because the Oilers cap sheet doesn't allow for a long rebuild. McDavid sits at $12.5 million. Draisaitl carries a $14 million hit. Bouchard is at $10.5 million.
You don't pay three players a combined $37 million and then hand the bench to someone learning on the job. That's the corner Bowman has painted himself into.
A Laviolette hire would be his safety net. The veteran resume, the playoff pedigree, the deflector shield when fans ask why nothing changed structurally after Anaheim.
Whether that's enough to flip the script on a core that just got embarrassed in Round 1 is the part nobody in Edmonton wants to talk about yet.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 25, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Taylor Hall | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Lane Hutson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Michael Matheson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jackson Blake | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Cole Caufield | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ivan Demidov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jake Evans | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mark Jankowski | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Seth Jarvis | - | 1 | 1 | |
| K'Andre Miller | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | - | - | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | - | - | |
| William Carrier | - | - | - | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||