I'll still contend that he was put into a gong-show s**t situation in Edmonton. Too many stories of the really young players (Hall mainly) being "given the keys to the kingdom" too soon. We've all seen how Hall cherry-picks.
Eakins was wanting full efforts/games being played by all his players...hard to fault him for that. Now, did he handle it well? No, no one can say otherwise. But he DID have success coaching younger players, so I think he has the tools, but again, he was basically put in a no-win situation in Edmonton.
I won't disagree that he was put in a bad situation, but watching the Oilers during the lockout shortened season under Krueger, then enduring a year and a half of Eakins, and now watching them under Todd Nelson, it's clear to me that Eakins was problem #1, even more so than the make up of the roster. Nelson has somehow managed to turn Anton Lander into a solid NHL player, something Eakins couldn't do. Eakins told Craig MacTavish at the start of the year that he did not want Derek Roy on his team, yet look at what he's done for Yakupov's game, the chemistry those two have is great and Roy is a solid stop-gap option until Draisaitl is ready for full-time 2nd line duty.
He made a mockery of Jeff Petry, continually embarrassing him and even healthy-scratching him. He force-fed Justin Schultz minutes. He implemented a swarm defensive strategy that had every single Oiler confused. One could argue that every single player on the Oilers regressed under Eakins. Just look at the turnaround players like Nugent-Hopkins, Eberle, Pouliot, and Yakupov have had since Eakins left. I'd cry if that guy was anywhere near our prospects lol.
EDIT: Just saw RL's post, back to injuries lol