Ken Holland almost had another dream ending to the latest chapter in his Hall of Fame career.
When the Edmonton Oilers appointed Jeff Jackson as their CEO of Hockey Operations on 3 August last year, the countdown on Holland’s time with the team had begun even if none of those involved were prepared to actually say it. The veteran executive had one year remaining on his contract with the Oilers and few people thought that he would be staying for longer.
Early in the 23-24 season it looked like he might not even see out that contract after his team had an appalling start to their campaign. Head Coach Jay Woodcroft carried the can for that and under new skipper Chris Knoblauch the Oilers went on an incredible roll that took them all the way to a memorable Game Seven.
The Florida Panthers ultimately ended Holland’s hopes of adding a fifth Stanley Cup to his resume and if he is to rekindle that pursuit he will do so with another team now that the Oilers have officially confirmed he will not be signing a new contract with them.
Holland’s departure will not be lamented by a lot of Oilers fans. When expectations are so high, it’s inevitable that the General Manager will get the brunt of the blame when they are not met. You can’t be a genius by winning with McDavid and Draisaitl, but you can definitely be cast as the idiot if you don’t.
That’s really not entirely fair. Take Zach Hyman as an example: the free agent signing raised plenty of eyebrows when it was announced in 2021. This was not because anyone doubted that he would be a good addition to the Oilers’ roster, but that giving him a full seven-year deal worth $38.5M looked overly generous. That was particularly the opinion coming out of Toronto, albeit from there it was coloured by the Maple Leafs losing out on their former player.
Three seasons into the contract and we can already judge it to be a resounding success, with the only risk being the incredibly unlikely scenario of him being utterly useless for the remaining four years. 54 regular season points from his 21-22 season was a solid start, 83 points in 22-23 and then 77 in the season just gone (including 54 goals) have been worth a lot more than the $5.5M average annual value (AAV) the Oilers have paid him.
The trouble is, you tend to be remembered for your bad deals more than your good ones. Two in particular will be part of Holland’s immediate legacy in Edmonton.
Jack Campbell: In the Soup
Where do we even start?
The Mikko Koskinen and Mike Smith goalie tandem somehow got the Oilers to the 2021-22 Conference Finals, yet along the way it felt like no lead was ever truly safe. They always gave the impression that they ‘had one in them’ as we say in football and, unfortunately, went on to prove that to be the case on numerous occasions.
That’s frustrating for any team. For a team with prime Connor McDavid in it, it’s the equivalent of buying an expensive one-of-a-kind sculpture and then displaying it on a rickety fold-up table.
Ken Holland’s main job in the 22-23 off-season was to find a good answer to his team’s questionable goaltender situation. He found Jack Campbell, who only counts as a good answer if the question is ‘name a contract that immediately looked like it would be a disaster from the moment it was announced’.
Year One didn’t go well for him; Year Two started so badly that he was demoted to the AHL after 5 games and stayed there for the rest of the season. He has three years left under contract, at an AAV of $5M, and whoever takes over the decision-making in Edmonton this summer will have to find a way to get him off the balance sheet one way or another.
Darnell Nurse: Difficult to Defend
And then there’s arguably Ken Holland’s biggest error of all: signing defenseman Darnell Nurse to an eight-year, $74M contract extension in August 2021.
It’s only arguable because Nurse is a good player and, by all accounts, a very popular leader among his teammates. Having been drafted by the Oilers with the seventh overall pick in the 2013 draft, he established himself as a quality all-round NHL defenseman. He is prone to a dip in form here and there to make him more a 2nd-pairing defenseman than a true top guy, but there’s no doubt that Nurse is a player you would want on your team.
Not at $9.25M per season, though, and in a salary cap sport you can’t simply dismiss the extra couple of million per year as a waste of somebody else’s money. It has a knock-on effect on the roster-building process and the cap space available to make improvements.
The great shame of this is that it puts an enormous target on Nurse’s back. Yes, we can all flippantly say that we’d happily put up with the criticism in exchange for $9.25M, but that’s not the point. This is a talented, proud professional hockey player for whom no amount of money will soften the blow of heavy criticism from increasingly large portions of his own fanbase and a diminishing role on the ice (by the end of the Stanley Cup Finals, he had been demoted to the third defensive pairing and the second penalty killing unit).
Holland’s decision to commit to this contract has not only saddled his successor with an overpaid player, it’s saddled a good player with pressure that appears to be weighing down his performance even more.
The Wheel Keeps On Turning
Rescuing that situation will now fall to someone else, alongside the futures of 10 Unrestricted Free Agents with minimal cap space to use.
With the NHL draft beginning tomorrow, and free agency opening on Monday, that task is going to be shared among several current staff members until an appointment can be made. “We don’t have a lot of time to do things” is how Jeff Jackson put it in his media availability an hour or so ago.
As for Holland, right now he has plenty of time on his hands to do whatever he so chooses; however, I suspect it won’t be long before he’s back working in an NHL Front Office in some capacity.
