Change in Player Development Staff?

From the looks of things, Rick Carriere may no longer be the Senior Director of Player Development.

Last year, when I wrote my most-read post on the Oilers Front Office, Rick Carriere was listed as the Senior Director of Player Development. He is no longer listed on their website.

He had served that role since 2012 after working 8 years with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the WHL. First he was a GM there, then a scout.

I have no idea if he was fired, or if his contract ran up and he wasn’t renewed. The Oilers apparently don’t think it’s very important for the fans to know who is now in charge of Player Development, so they just removed him from their website and didn’t bother telling anyone.

Carriere used to be directly above Scott Howson who serves as Vice-President of Player Development. Howson still has the same title and job description as he did prior. It looks as though only his boss has been relieved and no one has been promoted to that role.

Maybe the job has been delegated amongst a few different people, maybe Keith Gretzky or Craig MacTavish have taken over, maybe Scott Howson has taken over the responsibilities, I doubt we’ll get an answer. No one seems to have reported this, so information is very, very limited.

Luckily, the AHL situation has greatly improved from a year ago, and some of out lower picks are starting to look really good under the Chiarelli regime. If you ask me, any cuts of people from the Tambellini regime are good moves.

This could be a result of Jesse Puljujarvi not coming along as quickly as expected — which is actually a Todd McLellan issue. Or it could be the result of how disastrous the AHL team has been for as long as it has. I’m sure Keith Gretzky didn’t like walking into that mess last year.

Regardless, he appears to be gone, and on the surface it looks like a good thing. Let’s just hope that whoever is the replacement knows what they’re doing. If we can’t develop players properly, we’ll be bad forever.

Unfortunately, it appears Bill Scott still has his job mismanaging the Salary Cap. I’d like to see a change there in the near future.

Also, hopefully we’ll get some changes in the pro scouts soon. They’re a real problem.