by MacTavish won the Stanley Cup for the fourth time as a member of the New York Rangers and returned to Edmonton shortly after the end of his playing career.
As a coach in 2006, MacTavish led the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 7. He then moved into a management role as vice president of hockey operations and general manager.
MacTavish, 66, still an active member of the Oilers alumni, spoke with NHL.com to reflect on his career in Edmonton and share his thoughts on the League today.
The Oilers always treat their alumni well and you were able to have your family, friends and former teammates at the induction ceremony. How was it?
“It was really good. The Oilers have a great production staff and they herd us like cats. It was really well done, the whole few days. It’s always nice to see former teammates. I often think that we are closer now than we were then, despite the fact that we were close when we played. You get older and you realize the value of friendship more than when you were young and you appreciate your good friends more as you get older, I think. And we are getting older.”
Is it nice to see former teammates that you may not have seen in a while?
“Yes, that is true. The only thing I regretted in my speech was not mentioning Billy Ranford, because he was my roommate and the winner of Conn Smythe (1990), and the fans would have loved to hear that. But sometimes you get hyper-focused on delivering what you have, and you forget to open your mind to what you should be saying. But it was good to see him.”
How do you view the Oilers teams of the 1980s today, considering all you accomplished and won three Stanley Cups while you were there?
“It becomes clearer why we won. You become focused on talent. We had the better players, but it is much more complex than that. As you get older, you realize that other qualities are integral to success and winning. That is leadership, camaraderie, strength and competitiveness. That team had all those qualities.”
What is it like when you win the Stanley Cup with a close group of friends at that moment?
“When you have Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier on your team, you kind of expect to win. And then you add five other Hall of Famers. I talked to Mike Keenan about it, the 1987 Finals. He’s very proud of having the Philadelphia Flyers play us seven games, and he should, because they didn’t have the horses we had . Ron Hextall played well, but I thought it ended up being a closer series than it should have been. We had seven Hall of Famers, and they had two, maybe three. We had a special group of people, that’s for sure, and just the loyalty. I played there for almost 10 years, and you can’t do that if you didn’t have the loyalty of ‘Slats’ [Sather] and the technical staff and your fellow players. Slats was a very loyal leader and was loyal not only to the players, but also to the staff that was there, when the staff was much smaller. You played with the same guys for a lot longer than in the current era.
What did you think of the Oilers’ run to the Stanley Cup Finals last season, losing to the Florida Panthers, and were there any similarities to the team’s 2006 coaching run, losing to the Carolina Hurricanes? ?
“The parallels are eerily similar. In 2024 they were down 3-0 in the Final and in 2006 we were down 3-1 in the Final. Both teams made great comebacks, and they were very similar games in Game 6 and very similar games in Game 7. We crushed them in Game 6 in 2006 and they crushed them in Game 6 in 2024. We both couldn’t get our game find. in game 7.”
