Chia Canned II: Chia's Gone But Why Does the Org Still Smell Like Ass?

[Soundwave]

He did some things right. Talbot (for 1 year), Maroon with salary retained, found Koskinen, signed Chaisson, Russell, His errors far outweighed his successes. Worst Oiler GM followed by Lowe.

Ultimately I think even the Talbot find was a fail. Talbot was brought here to be the guy for multiple seasons, not just one good year, that wasn't the deal.

 

[Ritchie Valens]

I’m not convinced of this. Hithcock’s Comments thanking Gretzky for his work landing Manning and Petrovic suggest otherwise. What it looks like to me is the organization is in serious damage control right now.

Still too much that doesn’t make sense. If Chiarelli was operating on his own he should have been fired immediately after the Manning and Petrovic trades, they happened on the same day and were head scratching moves. Instead they waited another 24 days to can him. He was fired the day after Koskinen was extended. It’s reasonable to think he was fired for that but Nicholson immediately said that was an organizational decision. Had he said at that point Chiarelli was doing everything on his own and the Koskinen extension was the last straw it would have believable. Instead, he said the team had been discussing it with Chiarelli since December. We’ve since found out they’d been discussing Gagner with Chiarelli too. Doesn’t sound to me like the GM was operating on an island.

This looks a lot like people scrambling to save their own jobs to me. What better way to do it than trying to undue an unpopular and senseless deal made before the former boss was let go. Pull that off and maybe Keith looks like a better choice for GM. It doesn’t help either that nothing coming out of Nicholson’s mouth sounds believable.

I thought I'd reply to you in this thread as the Manning thread is teetering into the "off topic" territory.

As I said to Spawn earlier, somewhere in the middle is the truth. I tend to believe Stauffer on this one as what he said on the air could be considered libel if it is baseless/fabricated statements. If they are true, then there is no libel. Stauffer isn't an idiot, he's been broadcasting a long time and is not going to parrot things that aren't true on a public broadcast which are rumor. In addition, Stauffer also said the coaching staff (Mclellan and the gang) were against trading Strome, but Chiarelli did it anyways-that to me sounds like he began to isolate himself and thought he knew better than everyone else...but that's my interpretation. Interestingly enough, he fired Mclellan four days later so there was obviously some animosity growing between the two.

It's definitely a puzzle which is missing several pieces with so many head scratching moves that decimated the team further and what the real truth(s) are from what has been said publicly. Others, including myself have asked the same thing as you...if these were group decisions, as Nicholson has claimed, why not can him earlier if he had his wings clipped. Some of it makes me think Nicholson is the one lying to the public to protect Chiarelli for some unknown reason...my guess is to not throw him under the bus publicly, but at the end of the day, the teams' downward play and downward spiral in the standings (due to the roster moves Chiarelli made) compounded with an upcoming trade deadline and the Oilers moving closer and closer to "sell mode", it was the right time to can him, if not before.

It also does make me wonder how many strings Hitchcock is pulling too, as again, it's been known he did not like Caggiula and seemed happy to get any rough and tough style of D man in return for him. Wideman clearly wasn't in his good books either with the limited time he saw before being dealt, for lo and behold...another d-man with size. One thing is a certainty though, with most of the valuable pieces dealt away for scrap metal, any trades were going to be spare parts for spare parts as the other GMs knew how to manipulate Chiarelli. I just find it really interesting two of KG's first three moves are trying to undo a Chiarelli mistake, which makes me pause to wonder just how on board was he with these moves in the first place. Was he a "Yes" man, just going along with the moves Chiarelli made? Possibly.