- Rod Pedersen says the Oilers would have landed Bruce Cassidy if they waited one more week in June
- Edmonton pivoted to Mike Babcock after Vegas refused permission to interview Cassidy
- Read below for Pedersen’s full comments and the video
Rod Pedersen thinks the Oilers quit on Bruce Cassidy about seven days too early.
The veteran broadcaster said on the Bleed Oil Blue Podcast that Edmonton would have landed Cassidy as head coach if the club had held off a little longer in June instead of pivoting to Mike Babcock.
“I think Bruce Cassidy would have been a better fit, and had they waited a week, they would have had him.”
Asked whether that was a scoop or a hunch, Pedersen pointed at his own conversations around the league.
“That’s what I think, and I’ve talked to the agents and they’re all like that’s exactly what happened.”
Here’s Pedersen laying it out:
Edmonton asked Vegas for permission to speak with Cassidy in June and got turned down. Kelly McCrimmon said at his year-end session that the Knights granted exactly one team permission to interview Cassidy near the middle of the Cup Final, and nothing came of it.
Pedersen wasn’t finished with the comparison. He said Babcock has the resume to work in Edmonton and isn’t a bad guy, then added the line that will travel: “Every time he comes on my show, my phone blows up with players that hate him.”
Nobody inside the Oilers room has sounded anything like that. Connor McDavid called Babcock the “perfect fit” at Zach Hyman’s golf classic last week, and Leon Draisaitl said the group talked through Babcock’s Columbus history with him before the hire went through.
Take a look at McDavid explaining why Babcock’s different approach is what this team needs:
That version of June is an opinion, not a confirmed sequence of events. Vegas was never eager to hand a division rival its head coach, and the Knights would sooner pay Cassidy to sit out the year than watch him run a bench with McDavid on it.
The meeting never happened. That leaves Pedersen’s version impossible to prove and impossible to knock down, which is exactly why Oilers fans will keep chewing on it.
