Reviving a team? Hire a new coach!

On Monday, November 13, the Edmonton Oilers played their first game under new head coach, Kris Knoblauch.

What could have been an ordinary Monday was anything but after the Oilers management fired head coach Jay Woodcroft the day before. It was announced that his replacement would be a rookie NHL coach, Kris Knoblauch, who previously coached star player Connor McDavid. It was a controversial decision that many had issues with and created great anticipation before Monday’s game to see how well the team would do.

A (very) bad start

After a successful (yet not cup-winning) previous season, fans had high hopes for this year’s team. But disaster struck when they were humiliated at home by the Vancouver Canucks, losing 8-1.

The struggle continued and it was clear that some change should be which finally happened before Monday’s game against the New York Islanders.

For these reasons, I chose to live-tweet the highly anticipated event.

A new beginning

For Oilers fans, the enticement to follow the story was already there. I first tweeted that the puck would drop in one hour as suggested by Hayley Dorney in “How to use post threads“.

Sixty minutes later the entertainment began and I tried to enhance the emotion by tweeting about a clip of the new coach tearing up in an interview.

The Islanders scored after only 40 seconds which made this seem like it was going to be a sad story to relay. But by the end of the first period, it was tied 1-1 so it only made sense to play up the suspense in my live tweets.

I made sure to include when the game was half over and signify the middle of the event so that it has the proper story arc. In that tweet, I also wanted to emphasize the importance of the team needing to work harder to overcome their challenges.

There was a conveniant cliffhanger in the game after the second period as the game was still tied and could go either way. Thankfully, for fans and this live-tweeting experience, the Oilers scored three goals in the third period. It was a fun time to live tweet the goals, keep the story enticing, and in the end a successful first game for the new coach!