Never the loudest guy in the room but always the calmest, Knoblauch slowly worked his way toward his destiny.
SUNRISE, Fla. — Long before Jay Bouwmeester became a Stanley Cup champion with the St. Louis Blues, he said as a kid that his only goal in life was to play for the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
Now 45, Knoblauch was passed over for the Golden Bears job in 2012. When word leaked that he was runner-up for the position, he was dismissed by the WHL’s Kootenay Ice, somehow leading him east toand the OHL’s Erie Otters and then hurtling on a path back to Edmonton where it all started – but with the Oilers.
Just about the only emotion – positive or negative – that we’ve seen from Knoblauch since he took over as Oilers coach was a fist-pump after the Oilers clinched the Western Conference on Sunday night. Those Western Canadian farm boy sensibilities gave him the perfect temperament to be a coach. And boy, could he coach. In his first year in Kootenay, the Ice won the WHL championship. In Erie, Knoblauch became the first coach in OHL history to win 50 games in four consecutive seasons – and he only had McDavid for two of them.
It was always going to take a special set of circumstances, people that knew first-hand the kind of coach Knoblauch was – instead of people that had to take it on faith or reference – for him to get an opportunity to be an NHL head coach. “I had a pretty good idea of how we would play under Kris Knoblauch,” Stauffer said, “but I didn’t know he would be this unflappable.”
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