The Survivors

I just undertook what I found to be an interesting exercise: I went to the Oilers official site, and rolled through the coach, management and trainer biographies: in short, of everyone on the hockey side of the organization.

I hadn't realized how much turnover there had been in those positions, and the firing of the team's long-time trainers today put an exclamation point on that.

Here is the list, ranked in order of seniority, of personnel on the hockey side that currently serve as part of the Oilers organization:

• Joey Moss: 26 years
• Kevin Lowe: 11 years
• Jeff Lang: Seven years
• Kelly Buchberger: Five years
• Steve Serdachny: Four years
• Rick Olczyk: Three years
• Stephen Lines: Three years
• Steve Tambellini: Two years
• Chris Davie: Two years
• Pat Quinn: One year
• Tom Renney: One year
• Wayne Fleming: One year
• Myles Fee: One year
• Frederic Chabot: One year
• Mike Sillinger: One year
• Simon Bennett: One year
• Four positions as yet unfilled

Of the people above Tambellini on this list, Moss, Lang and Lines survived the recent firings, Buchberger and Serdachny survived the coaching purge a year ago, and Olczyk was promoted under Tambellini.  Meanwhile, Kevin Lowe was powerless to stop his brother from being fired.

If there was any doubt that this was Tambellini's team, it should be gone now.  Everybody here has either been hired by the general manager, or survived serious purges of their respective departments.  This is his hand-picked group of people running every element of the hockey side of the team.