Oilers Fire Steve Tambellini

Fantasy Impact: The Edmonton Oilers have fired their general manager Steve Tambellini and have (rumor has it) replaced him with former head coach Craig MacTavish. Former Columbus GM Scott Howson becomes the team’s Senior Vice President.

The old: Tambellini was a patient GM and although the strategy of trying to get the first overall pick is a brilliant one if your team is clearly not a contender…the strategy becomes far less brilliant the third time it happens and when a fourth summer hits with the team looking at a Top 8 pick, well, things move quickly into the ‘stupid’ column.

His main weakness, in my opinion (and I’m sure Oilers fans have hundreds of their own), was the fact that he sat on his hands. We all have a guy like that in our fantasy league. Builds a stockpile of great young talent through the draft, but is content to just do that forever. He’ll never trade one of his kids for fear of losing the deal. So even though every successful team has a nice mix of V, W, X, Y and Z-type players and the Oilers have 10 X’s…he didn’t trade one of those X’s to bring in a ‘V’ or a ‘Z’.

The new: MacTavish is a rookie GM. He’s never done this before. But the general consensus is that he will make a few moves in the summer. He’ll take the step that Tambellini feared to take. And looking at the stacked cards that are in MacTavish’s deck, some of the moves will be pretty huge. First on the docket, in my opinion, is Sam Gagner. The quality of return from that move alone would help this team tremendously.

With the talent already on the roster, gaining experience as a team – it is entirely possible that MacTavish will look like a genius one year from now. Entirely by accident.