Oilers coach Hitchcock reportedly ready to resign from his position

No doubt about it, the 2018-19 Edmonton Oilers have been a complete disaster. After getting off to another rocky start this season, general manager Peter Chiarelli finally, mercifully fired head coach Todd McLellan and replaced him with legendary bench boss Ken Hitchcock. Things seemed to stabilize… for awhile… but now here we are in mid February and Chiarelli is history and the Oilers are even further out of the playoff race.

The Oilers dropped ANOTHER decision last night against the Pittsburgh Penguins and are now 2-6-2 in their last ten games. Hitchcock has been extremely critical of his team’s performance the past week calling their play “unacceptable” and that the players don’t seem to care. “We didn't even give ourselves a fighting chance,” he said after a recent loss to the San Jose Sharks.

Now a report from NHL insider Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet seems to indicate that Hitch has seen enough. According to Friedman, there were rumblings that Hitchcock was ready to resign from his position this past weekend but, obviously, decided otherwise.

Check it out:

With Ken Hitchcock watching practice from the seats one day and then blasting the Oilers’ effort following Saturday’s 5–2 loss to San Jose, that there were rumours he’d had enough and would step down. That obviously didn’t happen, but it underlines how tense things are in Edmonton.

Could you imagine? How bad would it have reflected on Oilers management if Hitch just decided to up and quit? To be honest, not even a coaching staff of Scott Bowman, Al Arbour and Herb Brooks could inspire this team to success. It’s clear that management, whomever that ends up being, has some serious work to do this offseason in overhauling this franchise.