While the Edmonton Oilers public relations department sure loves to silence the common fan, they are seemingly unable to hush their own colleagues. Once again, head coach Craig MacTavish has publicly flown off the handle on one of his players.

Oilers bench boss Craig MacTavish celebrates a verbal knockout over Dustin Penner on Monday.

Below are a number of excerpts from Jim Matheson’s article on edmontonjournal.com, as MacTavish rips into the struggling Dustin Penner:

“When we signed Dustin we thought he’d be a top-two-line player…”

“We thought the contract ($4.25 million average for five years) was a starting point for him, but he views it as a finish line. I can’t watch it, certainly not for another 2 1/2 years…”

“You can’t throw gratuitous ice-time at a player that’s inconsistent,” said MacTavish. “It’s his competitiveness.The frustrating thing for me is he has the game but he can’t find it and you have to put the work in. He has a great set of tools but his legs are inconsistent. He needs more horsepower…”

Knockout!

Just face it–without Teemu Selanne, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry feeding him the puck, Dustin Penner sucks.

That being said, in terms of NHL betting,  Edmonton is a great underdog play tonight (+180) on the moneyline. The Oilers are  7-3 straight-up in their last 10 games against the Detroit Red Wings, and head to Joe Louis where they are 4-2 in their last six appearances.