Since the Edmonton Oilers remain in limbo regarding the team’s next head coach, it’s a perfect time to look back on the 18 men who have occupied the position. From the peaks to the valleys, to the few who were genuinely underwater, it’s been a wild ride for Oilers coaches since the team arrived in the NHL. Here they are, every one of them, ranked in order of effectiveness.1. Glen SatherSather won four Stanley Cups in Edmonton (1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988) as a coach, and five as general manager. Sather was smart and cunning as a GM, a deadly combination that allowed him to create the best team in NHL history, the 1986-87 Oilers.As a coach, he was ruthless with the roster, aggressively seeking change each season. Sather served as both good cop and bad cop to a group of gifted young men who went from teenagers to battle-hardened veterans in record time. You could make the case for Sather as both the greatest general manager and coach in the game’s history; his record is that strong.2. John MucklerMuckler is best remembered for being the head coach of the 1989-90 champion Oilers. He did an exceptional job that season, finding ways to make everything rhyme in spite of massive trades in-season, goalie upheaval (five different men tended net that year) and pivotal moments that could have gone the wrong way. Muckler’s choice to stay with Bill Ranford after a ghastly start to the opening series against the Winnipeg Jets in 1990 was his finest moment, with Ranford delivering a Conn Smythe performance as a reward.Muckler was hired as an assistant coach in Edmonton in time for the 1982-83 season, moved up to co-coach by 1985, and got the head job in the fall of 1989. He was an expert tactician for the time, often described by the media as the Oilers’ X’s and O’s mastermind.3. Craig MacTavishMacTavish is the first name from this century to appear on the list. Blessed with rapier wit and an ability to communicate with fans that has yet to be duplicated, his openness about roster construction and deployment fuelled analytics work done by now-famous hockey executives like Tyler Dellow and Tim Barnes.MacTavish eschewed the high draft picks in favour of hard workers who were intelligent and coachable. His five-on-five deployment led directly to Edmonton’s appearance in the 2006 Stanley Cup Final, possibly the finest single season by an Oilers head coach. His 2001-02 team allowed 182 goals, the fewest in team history.Kris Knoblauch coached the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final in back-to-back seasons. (Walter Tychnowicz / Imagn Images)4. Kris KnoblauchAn unpopular choice currently, since he was fired mere weeks ago, history will be kind to Knoblauch. He coached the team to the Stanley Cup Final in two straight years, losing in seven games (2024) and six games (2025) while falling short of the ultimate goal. Knoblauch’s key strengths were a calm demeanour, the ability to switch out goaltenders at exactly the right time and an extreme stubborn streak that allowed him to stay the course in his first two seasons. Although that stubborn streak would ultimately cost him his job, Knoblauch will get another chance in the NHL over the next couple of seasons. He’s a strong bet to win the Stanley Cup eventually.5. Todd McLellanMcLellan delivered the team’s first playoff success during the Connor McDavid era in the spring of 2017. The Oilers got by the San Jose Sharks and almost blew past the Anaheim Ducks during a spirited spring that showed great promise. McLellan showed he was a good judge of talent that wasn’t NHL-ready when fading Griffin Reinhart in 2015-16 and Jesse Puljujarvi in 2016-17 in spite of general manager Peter Chiarelli building his roster with those two youngsters as prominent names. In a more organized time in Oilers history, McLellan may have delivered the Stanley Cup.