Edmonton Oilers name Dave Tippett as new head coach

The search is over. General manager Ken Holland and the Edmonton Oilers announced Tuesday morning that they have hired Dave Tippett as their new head coach.

The 57-year-old, who hails from Moosomin, Sask., began his NHL head coaching career with the Los Angeles Kings in 1999 before lengthy stays with the Dallas Stars and Phoenix and Arizona Coyotes.

“He’s a good coach and [his teams] play a really sound defensive system,” longtime NHL executive Brian Burke said of Tippett on 630 CHED’s Oilers Now.

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A veteran with over 1,100 NHL games behind the bench, he won the Jack Adams Award as the league’s Coach of the Year in 2010, leading the Coyotes to a 50-25-7 record and into the playoffs. He reached the conference final with them in 2012.

Most recently he was a senior adviser for the NHL’s Seattle expansion franchise.

Tippett is regarded by some as a defensive-minded coach, but his former teammate, now an analyst for the NHL Network, Brian Lawton, doesn’t agree.

“Some people equate Dave defensively because he was a defensive specialist as a player,” Lawton said on Oilers Now. 

“He’s a forward thinker, he’s a great communicator and I would expect the Edmonton Oilers would reach new heights and be as exciting as you’ve ever seen them. He would want to utilize the weapons that they have.”

He has coached Team Canada at the World Hockey Championships in 2014 and has served as an assistant in previous tournaments as well. As a player, he captained Canada’s 1984 Olympic hockey team.

As a player, Tippet appeared in 721 NHL games between 1983 and 1994, splitting time between the Hartford Whalers, Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers. He registered 262 points and 317 penalty minutes.

An announcement on Tippett’s assistants is expected in the near future.

Holland confirmed he wouldn’t be keeping Ken Hitchcock around as head coach for the 2019-20 season when the Oilers announced Holland as the new GM on May 7.

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