As widely reported yesterday from many outlets including right here at TPS, Todd Nelson has been named as the head coach of the Oklahoma City Barons. Also, as was written in this space back on July 5th, Gerry Fleming is indeed back with the team as the assistant coach.Nelson is in the middle of the photo above patrolling the Atlanta bench last season.
Interestingly, the Edmonton Oilers also announced the bench staff for the 2010-11 season today which will pretty much drown out the minor league team's thunder.
Kelly Buchberger is back and, surprise surprise, Steve Smith has returned to the organization as well. That name alone will be a contentious one for much of Oilerville.
I'm a little surprised the Oilers and Barons would present these announcements on the same day - I would have thought, especially from the Edmonton end, that they'd want to help the Barons a bit with the publicity. Perhaps it won't matter in the end but would giving the Barons the media spotlight in Edmonton for one day be a bad thing?
1 comment:
The way the press release went out at EXACTLY the same time OKC was announcing Todd Nelson...
You have to think the logic was that they were trying to distract from one situation with the other.
Todd Nelson is a "meh" choice for OKC, simply because of the track record he doesn't have, but Steve Smith & Kelly Buchburger were always going to catch hell from Oilers fans who have been complaining about a perceived "old boys club" in the organization.
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