Make no mistake about it, the Pat Quinn era is underway in Edmonton.

EDMONTON — It still doesn’t look quite right, and it probably won’t for a while.

The dark blue coach's jacket and hockey gloves are familiar. The hair is greyer than we remember, and that face... If you went to the Central Casting catalogue and looked up "lifelong hockey man," that face would be the one.

But there it was, strangely pictured on the front page of the Edmonton Journal Monday morning. His picture was well above the fold, the top of his head biting in to the "E" and "D" in the paper’s masthead.

It was a big ol’ picture of Pat Quinn, head coach of... wait for it... the Edmonton Oilers.

"This is my team now," the 66-year-old said on Monday.

It may look strange to us, but it feels perfectly normal for Quinn to be back in the city where he won the 1963 Memorial Cup on the Oil Kings’ blue-line. Back then the Journal landed on your doorstep at five in the afternoon.

And the internet? What’s that?

"I’m in a place where I know. I mean, I know Edmonton. I’ve known it for years," Quinn said. "I’m in a place where I like the people I’m working with. I felt the same, when I was in Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, wherever. I put on that sweater, that’s who I work for. It’s no trouble at all."

Quinn’s glasses sit nearer the end of his nose than they did when he left the Leafs four seasons ago, and he still uses some ancient terms to describe players. A fast starter is a "morning glory," while the guys destined or the minor leagues are "rubbydubs."

He still refers to the ECHL as the Eastern League, where the Long Island Ducks once toiled.

If his vocabulary has stood still however, his coaching resume has continued to march forward. His national team work kept Quinn current — which is good considering the project he has here in Edmonton, where the Oilers have missed the playoffs for three straight seasons.

"He seems to be a teacher; he seems to talk to everyone," said Edmonton’s first-line centreman, Shawn Horcoff. "He wants sharpness. He wants everyone to think on the same page, use our heads and secondly, be aggressive.

"He’s given us a lot more leeway offensively to create chances."

The thing about living outside the Centre of the Universe is, when a man coaches the Toronto Maple Leafs for as long as Quinn did [seven seasons] he becomes linked with that blue Maple Leaf. Then there were the five seasons in Vancouver, a divisional foe for Edmonton, as well as Olympic and World Junior assignments.

There are coaches whose credibility has suffered because they never played the game, and others who haven’t coached under the fire of a major Canadian market. Others haven’t had the opportunity to learn how to handle the game’s elite players.

At 66, Quinn can tick every one of those boxes. Truly, if there is something inside the game of hockey that these eyes have not seen, then it likely hasn’t happened yet.

"Every time he steps in the dressing room there is that presence behind him," Oilers winger Fernando Pisani said. "He has a ton of experience; guys respect him. When he walks in the room you can tell, he commands that presence. He’s played the game, coaches it. He has a lot of experience."

The primary questions at this camp do not revolve around the coaching staff, however. Together Quinn, Tom Renney, Wayne Fleming and Kelly Buchberger form a guarantee that — whatever happens this season — being out-coached will not be a malady that the Oilers suffer from.

The problem here is what sits in front of Quinn.

The Oilers weren’t good enough last season, and the only major roster move was changing goalie Dwayne Roloson for Nikolai Khabibulin. They added Mike Comrie last week — helpful, but not what you’d call a blockbuster move.

"Looking at our team last year, everyone feels we underachieved," Pisani said. "Going into this year. Our focus is, we can do more. We can be better. That’s out mentality going. We, as players, can contribute more. We know we can add more to the team."

"The sobering fact is, we didn’t make the playoffs last year Quinn said. "The last 10 games, when it was there for us, we didn’t get the job done."

If this team is lucky, they’ll still have a legitimate playoff shot left at the 72 game mark. If that’s the case, Quinn will have done everything you could ask of him.