I think Jackson respects Hollands experience and I think they both kept it professional but I doubt they were overly buddy buddy with each other.
Its clear that Jackson wasn’t happy with Hollands drafting and development. But overall he probably appreciated the job he did.
Holland probably didn’t like that he was overstepped. I mean he joined here as president and GM so he had full control. Katz hired and created a new position to put someone above Holland. It obviously rubbed Holland the wrong way, but he’s professional enough and knew that it was his last year.
Things seemed amicable and professional. Nothing wrong with that.
We have no information on this to draw a conclusion. Jackson's a professional negotiator who by occupation has had to work effectively with a wide variety of personality types. He also had a longstanding business relationship with Holland. And Holland as such as well.
Holland had an extremely long leash in Detroit in a sustaining phase of a highly successful franchise. He came into a highly dysfunctional organization and delivered stability. He's also been around the block enough to know that a clear succession plan is required for any operation. It changed with decisions above him to bring in Jackson. The key word is professionalism. Don't have to like it but there's always an open door to choose to leave if not in agreement or alignment or lack of respect involved. Holland had already earned the highest financial compensation awarded for this job for his tenure in Edmonton.
Holland did a lot of good things to bring stability and nurture a winning culture. But there were most definitely some blind spots like draft and development; traditional, more methodical decision making (aka slower); contract negotiations often player friendly (keeping with Oiler historically overpaying).
Jackson came in to modernize the organization's approach. Certainly this can't be easy for the incumbent guy's ego or pride. But by action alone the transition pulled a lot of aces with new head coach hiring; patience not panicking on goaltending; effective trade deadline and subsequent re-signing. We don't know about replacing Wright with Pracey but a key first round pick was stagnating in Bakersfield and not alot of depth help showing.
