TALKING POINTS: Woodcroft speaks at end-of-season media availability

EDMONTON, AB - Oilers Head Coach Jay Woodcroft spoke to the media on Tuesday in his end-of-season media availability at the Hall of Fame Room in Rogers Place.
Woodcroft discussed a number of topics including his first season as an NHL bench boss, his future plans with the organization, the growth in the Oilers young players, and more.
Read the transcript of Woodcroft's press conference and watch the full interview below.

Woodcroft on his future with the Oilers:
"I've worked here for seven years as a proud member of this organization. This is my third different job title and I enjoyed it. I don't have any update on it. Ken and I are getting through our player meetings right now and I'm sure we'll sit down early next week and work through it."
Woodcroft on how he evaluates his coaching process and the year that was in '21-22:
"I take detailed notes on every day. I go back and personally look at the things I was thinking at different times and look at the reasons why we made certain decisions, how we handle certain situations, and how we go through adverse moments. What happens immediately after your season ends, you want to make sure that you're wrapping things up with your players the right way and in a timely fashion. Yesterday there were some medicals and a team meeting and we got through meeting with some of our younger players who didn't play in the playoffs. Over the next couple of days we'll meet with players and ask good questions, and more importantly, listen."
Woodcroft on how much better of a coach he is now compared to the start of the playoffs:
"Experience is really important. I felt ready for this opportunity in February based on my preparation over 17 years of professional hockey. I felt ready heading into the playoffs since I've been a part of a lot of playoff games in different fashions and job titles. It wasn't my first time in this league getting ready for a playoff series, but I think when you work your way through, you learn different lessons along the way. That first series versus LA, it's not like it all went smooth. There were adverse times. We learned a lot about each other in that series. I thought our habits held up under pressure. We worked our way into a second-round series against a heavily favoured Calgary Flames team -- the number one team in our division. We were able to dispatch them in a timely fashion and learned a lot of lessons about our group. Heading into the third round of the playoffs, it didn't go our way. I think you can learn as much or more when you don't achieve what you want. We are learning and processing those lessons."
Woodcroft on the most important thing he's done with the Oilers since joining the team:
"I can tell you what I tried to do. I think it's the job of the head coach to define what is most important, to provide a sense of true north, and that's what I tried to do. I tried to provide a sense of hope and a spirit of optimism to a team that was out of the playoff picture."
Woodcroft on having a full off-season of preparation to lead the Oilers next season:
"I want to start out by saying one of the advantages of coming up the way Dave and I did at that time was we got thrown right into the fire. It was five games in seven nights, travel all over, the team was out of the playoffs, and we were about to play a murderers' row of Tampa Bay, Florida, and Carolina on one of the road trips. What we did at that time, we just tried to use our eyes and instincts. We weren't beholden to any biases on players, we just came in and tried to use the benefit of our experience in order to make the best decisions possible. It doesn't mean we made every right decision, but we weren't caught up in all the stuff around the team at that time. We just tried to push our team forward a little bit each day. Although it wasn't ideal, typical, or normal for people in their first opportunity, I didn't see it as a bad thing at the time.
"Going back to your question, I think the preparations for next season began yesterday. It starts with a thorough review of what occurred during the 2021-22 season, what occurred from February 11 to June 7, and what occurred in the playoffs. When you do your work, you go through and you're meticulous in your approach. How you do things and answers become clear. When you start to find answers that inform how you want to proceed when you go forward. There might be an advantage in that."
Woodcroft on knowing some of the young guys on the Oilers from his time in Bakersfield and not having to focus on only a few pre-season games when evaluating them:
"I have shared experience with a lot of players in our organization, so it's not about seeing them for three pre-season games and making an immediate judgement based only on what you see. You mention Ryan McLeod. One of the things when we first came up, we knew McLeod was an elite penalty-killer at the American Hockey League level. At the time, the penalty kill was taking on a little bit of water from December 1 to when I came up. Based on our knowledge of what we can do at that level, it informed a bit of the decision in terms of his elevation in penalty-kill ice time. Same thing with Kailer Yamamoto in that situation. That's an example of how experience with that player allows you to make informed decisions.
"For me, with those players, I not only have shared experiences with them, but they have shared experiences with me. They know what the expectations are. They understand I value being tough-minded on standards of performance and I think they could attest that I have a keen understanding of how people operate. That's a core tenant of my coaching philosophy."

Woodcroft on his decision-making and how it came along as a head coach:
"I tried to follow the same processes that led me to this position. On February 11, the team was five or six points out of the playoffs, I think my mandate was to get this team into the playoffs. We made the playoffs, we won two rounds, we made it into the third round, and along the way we had to demonstrate an ability to make hard decisions. I don't profess to say I made every right decision, but we played hockey in the month of June and we would have taken that bargain on February 11. I'm proud of our players, coaching staff, and organization that we made it to that point, but there is more there. To get where we want to go, we have to continue to strive to improve. That process began yesterday. When you demonstrate an ability to make hard decisions, then when you speak of soft values I think people get it."
Woodcroft on the steps the Oilers have made over the last several years and how they can take the next one:
"I think you have to do your work. I don't think there is any substitute. Hard work works. Now we're in the process of really looking at every process of our operation. We're happy with how far we got in the 2021-22 playoffs. When I say happy, I mean we're pleased we took a step here, but we're not satisfied. Our bellies aren't full. We're going back to examine every examine of how we do things and there is no substitute for that."
Woodcroft on Jesse Pulujarvi's play this season:
"I think it's only fair if I comment on the last 38 games or so that I was here for. On February 11, one of the first things I wanted to do was distribute the centre icemen. So we ended up having Connor, Leon, Nuge, and Ryan on four lines. We called it the spine of the team. In that first game, I put Jesse with Connor and Zach Hyman. He hadn't scored a goal in a long time, but he scored a goal on the power-play goal against the New York Islanders, an important goal in a 3-1 win for us in the third period. He played against San Jose in a great team win for our team, and we won 4-0 on the road. We went to LA and won an important game on the road against a division rival. We came back and played Anaheim at home, and he scored a goal in the second period and got hurt. So, he had two goals in four games when the new coach came in.
"I think he was starting to build a bit of personal momentum and he got hurt. It wasn't an easy injury, it was a six-week injury that affected the way he was skating. It took him a while to get back up and running, when we put him back in the lineup we put him with Leon Draisaitl. Towards the end of the regular season, he missed a full week with a non-covid illness. Those things I don't think helped his own personal confidence and momentum, but he never lost the belief of his teammates and his coaching staff. I thought he scored a couple of big goals for us in key moments in the playoffs. He's a good player for us and a good, young hockey player."
"If you looked at his point totals this season, he set a career-high. He's a young hockey player. For him, he is not dissimilar to Ryan McLeod, Evan Bouchard, Stuart Skinner, and some of our other young guys. That's where the growth on this team is going to come from. They got some really good experiences during our playoff run to aid that growth. We have a strong belief in the next wave of young players coming through this organization and Jesse is one of them."
Woodcroft on the future contributions of Stuart Skinner:
"I was the coach in Bakersfield when Stuart first came into professional hockey. In his first year, he was up and down between the American Hockey League and the ECHL, he ended up playing three games for us in the second-round playoff series and I felt good about him. The next year he took on the lion's share of games and had his ups and downs then went back down to the ECHL again. In our third year, he backstopped our team to the Division Championship. He played a hockey game on May 31 of 2021 to help the Condors win something in their last game. This year I think he got more NHL experience. I think his last NHL game he got a shutout in, that San Jose game which was my second game here. I have a strong belief in Stuart's ability. I've seen him grow with his on-ice skillset. I've seen him grow as a person. I feel good about Stuart Skinner and his potential as a really good NHL goaltender."

Woodcroft on what he needs to see from Puljujarvi to use him potentially on the penalty kill:
"Potentially, so I think it's important to be open-minded. I think the time for experimentation is in training camp, pre-season, and early in the season. So if your question is about penalty-killing ice time, when Dave and I came up the penalty kill was taking on water. I think it was in the 60 [percentile] or something along those lines during the time frame and we slowly chipped away. One of the ways we did that was to go to what we knew as coaches, and eventually the penalty kill became a source of strength for our team. I think that is a potential area for increased ice time, but I also think it's important that players in your lineup find a way. In order to garner more ice time, you've got to play on one of the special teams. So it is a potential option.
"There are two parts to that question: it's nice to have a plan, but then you've got to use the real-time information that players give you and judge if the plan's working or not. So you've got to be light on your feet in terms of what you're seeing as well."
Woodcroft on the importance of making adjustments in practice over just video sessions:
"That's a very good question too because one of the challenges that we faced as a team from February 11 onwards was the schedule and lack of practice time to be able to implement some things you might want to fix. I would walk in here and you guys would roll your eyes when I would say we were concentrating on one thing, the lead domino, or this is what we're doing because it's hard in that situation to give the buckshot theory of this, this or this. You have to be very focused and specific in what you want to achieve, understanding the schedule with a lack of practice time. I think training camps are where you begin to lay a foundation. It's where you're able to make system adjustments. It's where you're able to set yourselves up to compete because you're able to compete with each other in training camp so that you can compete for each other as the season goes on."
Woodcroft on being a first-year head coach in a ravenous hockey market like Edmonton:
"A lot different than in Bakersfield, California I can tell you that. That's not disparaging to the great people down in Bakersfield, but it was typically one newspaper reporter and maybe a TV camera. But for me, I looked at my daily opportunity to be with you good folks as an ability for the coaching staff and me specifically to communicate directly to our fanbase. I think we have the best fans in the National Hockey League - the most passionate fans and most knowledgable fans - so I think it is unique. It's unique to a Canadian market, it's unique to a great city like Edmonton, it made me better, it made me really think about the message I want to get across to our great fans, it's part of the job, and a part that I accept.
"I think it was a different year for the city, it was a different year with all the COVID stuff, it was a different year for our team with a great start, a tough middle, a coaching change, and then the great run we went on at the end. I think what's most important is that our fans stood by the team, our team had the goal of making this city proud, and in the end, we held together through stormy seas. We know there's more to give, but we're proud of our effort this year."
Woodcroft on his evaluation of the blueline this season and the personnel moving forward:
"I'm proud of our effort, not only on the blueline but in net and up front. You don't make it to the third round of the playoffs without a lot of really good efforts. I think we saw growth, I think we saw improvement. I think in order for us to get to where we want to, defending is a team thing. It's not just on our d-core. I think there are areas where we can get better and improve, but if you're asking me about the men who dressed on our blueline, I'm proud of their effort and we're not where we are without them.
Woodcroft on Philip Broberg being a full-time NHL defenceman next season:
"I'm very excited about Philip Broberg as a long-time Edmonton Oiler. He's going to be a heck of a player. I think he has a very high ceiling. I got to see him in a different way in the American Hockey League, and I got to see him in some stints in the National Hockey League. When you look at Philip Broberg, he's someone who if you go back to before he was even drafted, he kept playing hockey with very few breaks in between with all the national program, the draft and all those types of things.
"I think it's a big summer for Philip. I think he has the potential to be a really good player in the National Hockey League for a long time. What he does with his summer and what he does with his training camp is up to him, so I'd be remiss to commit to anything in June here. But I'm excited about Philip Broberg. He's a heck of a person and a heck of a player."