Intentional or Not, Are the Oilers Worried About the So-Called LeaK?
There’s a growing side conversation around the Edmonton Oilers’ coaching search, and it has less to do with who they’re hiring and more to do with how one piece of information became a public storyline in the first place.
Vegas Golden Knights GM Kelly McCrimmon recently suggested that the Oilers were behind the leak that they had been denied permission to speak with former Vegas head coach Bruce Cassidy. According to McCrimmon, that detail wasn’t supposed to become public at all, and only surfaced because someone from Edmonton’s side let it out.
The Golden Knights and the Oilers are in a bit of a dispute here.
If that’s accurate, it adds an interesting wrinkle to what is normally a fairly routine part of the NHL hiring process. Teams request permission to speak to coaches under contract all the time. Teams say no all the time. Most of the time, nobody outside the room ever hears about it.
This time, it became a headline. And that’s where things start to get murky.
The first question is obvious: why would the Oilers want that information to be public? In theory, there are a couple of possible explanations, though neither is confirmed. One is that it wasn’t intentional at all. It was just information slipping through the usual network of agents, media contacts, or league sources. In hockey, “leaks” rarely come from one clear source, even if teams sometimes get blamed for them.
Another possibility is that it was strategic, at least indirectly. In some cases, teams allow information to circulate to signal seriousness in a coaching search or to subtly apply pressure in negotiations. But if that was the goal here, it clearly didn’t move Vegas. McCrimmon’s stance remained firm, and there’s no indication the Golden Knights ever reconsidered.
For context, Vegas denying the Oilers permission to speak with Cassidy isn’t unusual.
What’s also worth noting is that denying permission for coaching interviews—especially within a division—isn’t unheard of. It might frustrate outside teams, but it’s still within a club’s rights to do so when a coach is under contract or in a transitional situation. Vegas has shown in the past that they’re not overly concerned with optics if they believe it protects competitive advantage.
From Edmonton’s side, though, the broader concern isn’t just the Cassidy situation—it’s how these kinds of stories shape perception during an already sensitive coaching search. Even if nothing improper happened, public narratives have a way of sticking.
And that’s really the takeaway here.
Are the Oilers using this leak as a public leverage battle?
Whether this was intentional, accidental, or somewhere in between, it shows how quickly private front-office conversations can become public leverage battles. One denied interview request is routine. Turning it into a league-wide talking point? That’s where things get complicated.
In the end, the Oilers might not have been trying to start a story—but in today’s NHL, stories don’t always wait for permission either. Either way, the Oilers likely aren’t unhappy with where things stand right now.