Edmonton Oilers fire coach Eakins
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) – Dallas Eakins was fired Monday as coach of the Edmonton Oilers, who have lost 15 of 16 games and are well on the way to missing the playoffs for the ninth consecutive season.
General manager Craig MacTavish will temporarily coach the team until the job is given to Todd Nelson, who is being promoted to interim head coach from Edmonton’s American Hockey League affiliate in Oklahoma City.
MacTavish called Eakins an “excellent coach” but said something had to be done after the losses piled up. The general manager acknowledged his share of the blame, saying there was “blood all over my hands” because he “put the lineup together.”
“I’m not here to absolve myself of accountability for the situation that we’re in,” MacTavish said at a news conference.
Edmonton has 19 points through 31 games, last in the Western Conference. The Oilers went 36-63-14 under Eakins in parts of two seasons, including 7-19-5 this year.
Hired in the summer of 2012 to help the Oilers be “in the mix every year to win,” Eakins missed the playoffs in his only full season behind the bench. This was his first job as an NHL head coach.
“I had no real good reason to do this outside of performance,” MacTavish said of Eakins’ dismissal. “That’s the bottom line that we’re all judged by, is the performance level of the hockey club and certainly the record. I would point to those things solely as the reasons for this change.”
The Oilers didn’t seem to make any significant strides under their fifth coach in seven seasons. Pat Quinn (2009-10), Tom Renney (2010-12) and Ralph Krueger (2013) also failed to get the team to the playoffs.
Edmonton has not made the postseason since 2006. The Oilers finished with the third fewest points in the NHL in 2013-14 with a record of 29-44-9 in the one full season under Eakins.
Considered a hot coaching candidate while with the AHL’s Toronto Marlies, Eakins got the job with the Oilers in large part because MacTavish believed he could relate to young players. Before coaching the Marlies, he was an assistant for two years with the Maple Leafs.
With an average age of under 27, the Oilers’ roster includes three No. 1 overall picks: Taylor Hall in 2010, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in 2011 and Nail Yakupov in 2012.
Recently, MacTavish gave Eakins a vote of confidence, but the steady losing changed things.
“The losses have an emotional toll on everybody in the organization — at least they should — in particular the coaching staff,” MacTavish said. “I think the fact we weren’t able to get any traction at all after that, it led me to believe the time was right for a coaching change.”
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