Losing the Stanley Cup Finals is bad enough. Losing it twice in a row? That’s one blow you’d take a lifetime to recover from. However, Kris Knoblauch doesn’t have that kind of time on his hands. The seasoned NHL coach has one year left with the Edmonton Oilers, and he wants to make sure the Western Conference powerhouse makes the 2025-26 season as memorable as possible. With that in mind, Knoblauch has revealed that changes are in order.

After losing to the Florida Panthers in Game 6 last month, the Oilers’ boss was understandably devastated. “There’s no silver lining to this,” he brooded afterwards. However, it seems like Knoblauch is unwilling to leave things to fate and instead is making it a personal mission for himself to help the team bounce back. To achieve that extent, things are being shaken up for better results in the coming season.

Kris recently talked to reporters via a virtual call to talk about how the Oilers camp is revamping itself to have a better shot at winning the Cup next season. In a YouTube upload by the official Edmonton Oilers account from Monday, Knoblauch confessed how the team’s penalty kill has been subpar in the 2024-25 season and how that could change soon.

On being asked if Edmonton will fare better in terms of penalty kills in the upcoming season, given that the responsibility of the coaching in that department still will be undertaken by former NHL defenseman Mark Stuart, Knoblauch admitted that conversations about penalty kills have been a dominant point of discussion throughout the season. Acknowledging that penalty kills have been poor in the playoffs, the coach said, “There will be changes to our system. We will be doing things a little bit differently…There’s a lot of conversations, a lot of analyzing what other teams are doing, and then having those conversations within the coaching staff and moving forward. So, I know Mark Stuart has started that process.”

“Obviously, he’s very familiar what other teams have done already, but also finding out what type of team we’d have, what penalty kills we’d have going into the next season, and then deciding exactly what that system would be,” Knoblauch said further about how the former Bruins’ blueline maestro has already gotten the ball rolling on figuring out new penalty kill tactics for the Oilers.

The Oilers came into the 2024-25 season as Stanley Cup finalists, who held the fort all the way till Game 7. However, back to the regular season, issues started showing almost immediately. Edmonton’s way of handling things poorly in shorthanded situations only exposed the gaping holes in its defensive line blatantly. In the 2023-24 season playoffs, the Oilers posted a thunderous 95% success rate on penalty kills, which fell to just below 60% at the beginning of the 2024-25 regular season.

The woes seemed endless, as the Oilers struggled with penalty kills even against the Dallas Stars in the 2025 Western Conference Finals. “I think we all knew coming into this year that we’re probably not going to replicate last year. That was a run you go on one time,” admitted a long-faced Mattias Janmark, Edmonton’s resident penalty kill specialist. Naturally, with such memories still fresh, Kris Knoblauch knew that novel strategies needed to be whipped up.

And not just in terms of penalty kills.

Kris Knoblauch is putting in the work for all departments

Without a doubt, the penalty kills have been the biggest headache for the Oilers. So much so that Knoblauch even confessed in June that it was the shortcoming in this particular area that thwarted Edmonton’s Stanley Cup hopes. Hopefully, with Stuart gearing up to shoulder more responsibilities, that is likely to change. But Kris knows that the troubles span wider than only penalty kills. Power play is also something they’d need to work on.

In lieu of that goal, the Oilers and Knoblauch have brought in Paul McFarland as the team’s new power play specialist. With years of experience as the head coach of the WHL’s Calgary Hitmen and more time spent with the NHL’s Florida Panthers and Maple Leafs in various roles, McFarland could be a great addition to the team staff. “He’s done a heck of a job on getting the most out of the personalities he’s had, but also very strong is the success that he had with those good power plays in Toronto and Florida. He’ll be able to bring that over and be able to have a good strong working relationship with the players that we have on our team right now,” Knoblauch said about his newest colleague.

With so many new faces in the squad, do you think Knoblauch will be able to lead the Oilers to the ultimate hockey silverware on his final run with the team? How do you foresee the 2025-26 season unfolding for Edmonton? Tell us in a comment!