I never said anything about righting the ship, I don't think that was possible. However, he could've and should've got more out of those guys and it's pretty damn clear he didn't like the majority of the players, and the players didn't like him. Dubnyk went from being a fringe backup to an above-average starter and Schultz went from being a healthy scratch to a very good #3/4 PMD. Yakupov scored 31 points in 48 games, Eakins completely destroyed his confidence and tried to mold him into something he wasn't. 2 years of being in a doghouse will ruin any players development.
Krueger had the team and the players trending in the right direction. Eakins made the team a tirefire. It's one thing to miss out on the playoffs and struggle to improve, it's another when you make decent players useless.
Still not buying it. It just so happens Eakins was fired in the 2014-15 season, a season when the team blatantly and shamelessly went out of its way to tank it for McDavid. The only organization that went for it harder was Buffalo. They knew they had a bad team and made it demonstrably worse over the course of that season. Not sure why Eakins gets the majority of the blame there. Do you honestly believe the team wasn't already planning to tank it before the year even began?
And you can keep trying to argue that Eakins "ruined" Yakupov. He was, at best, a marginal scorer when Eakins took over, but if indeed he was anything other than a bust, the talent would've emerged. I don't believe it's possible to ruin a star player's development by mishandling him. You can, at best, delay it severely, like Keenan did with Stephen Weiss. Yak was never any good. And I've pointed out already the organization is already mishandling Poolparty in almost exactly the same way they mishandled Yak, yet Eakins has nothing to do with that.
I've just pointed out that things were bad before Eakins showed up, they just happened to come to a head during his tenure there. I won't argue that he made mistakes, in fact he made some bad ones. Really bad ones. But to lay the blame at the feet of a guy who was there for
eighteen months when this team has had a track record of failure and incompetence that spans over a decade, I dunno what to tell ya.
To be clear, I don't know if Eakins is a good NHL coach, but I don't think a disastrous stint with the 2nd-dumbest organization in NHL history defines him.
Jared Bednar had an even worse season in 2016-17 his first year in the league. He definitely butted heads with at least one player (Soderberg) and this season, as the multitude of playoff avatars are pointing out, the team's best player outright yelled expletives at him. Bednar is capable of making mistakes too, and probably made some missteps his first year in the league too. He rightfully got a second chance. We'll see if Eakins gets one and what he ends up doing with it.
