Edmonton Oilers Steal Keith Gretzky Away From Boston Bruins
Keith Gretzky has left the Boston Bruins to join the Edmonton Oilers
The Boston Bruins organization lost a key member of its scouting team on Tuesday, with the announcement that the Edmonton Oilers have hired Keith Gretzky as an assistant general manager. Gretzky who has been serving as the director of amateur scouting for the Bruins is now joining his former boss and current GM of the Oilers Peter Chiarelli.
Gretzky, whose younger brother happens to be hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, oversaw the Bruins’ last three drafts after being hired by Peter Chiarelli and Cam Neely in August of 2013 . He had replaced Wayne Smith, whom Chiarelli fired after years of unproductive drafting outside of sure-things Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton.
While the Bruins drafted poorly under Smith’s guidance, they’ve fared better since. Gretzky’s first draft saw the black and gold select David Pastrnak late in the first round, and though two of the team’s first-round choices were criticized in the 2015 draft, the trio Boston landed in the second round (Brandon Carlo, Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson and Jeremy Lauzon) represent a strong group of prospects that are looking extremely promising for the Bruins.
It is not yet clear who will replace Gretzky. Scott Fitzgerald currently serves as the team’s assistant director of amateur scouting and is a likely candidate. Joe Haggerty of CSNNE smartly points out that Dean Malkoc and Ryan Nadeau are also good internal candidates for the job.
Malkoc has served as the Bruins cross-over scout in Western Canada over the course of the last couple of seasons, Nadeau on the other hand has overseen the Bruins analytic’s operation and has been key in helping the team find NCAA talent over the last couple of years, and in turn has helped them find drafted free agent talent.
The Boston Bruins always have the option to go outside of the organization, but with the season rapidly approaching the smart move for the team is to fill the role from within the organization. Haggerty also pointed out in his article that Sweeney has had the tendency as GM to hire from within the organization unlike Chiarelli who went outside the organization to hire Gretzky 3 seasons ago.
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It has been interesting to watch Chiarelli start to build the Oilers into his vision over the last year, he has helped by bringing in staff he worked with in Boston along with acquiring former Bruins players. On the Olilers roster sits former Bruins forward Milan Lucic, defenseman Andrew Ference, and back-up goaltender Jonas Gustavsson. In addition Chiarelli also wanted to acquire B’s defenseman Adam McQuaid last off-season and offered the Bruins a trade involving Dougie Hamilton before Sweeney traded him to the Calgary Flames. It will be a continuing story the Bruins vs Chiarelli saga, it will be interesting to see if he tries to poach some more Bruins players to join him in Edmonton.