Since it looks like this year is over I thought now is probably a good time to assess Eakins' first year as coach (also a nice distraction from the global pandemic and subsequent economic collapse).
Anyways, I know he didn't have much to work with but the returns on the first year are not great. Special teams is usually a pretty good metric of coaching impact and right now our PP is ranked 30th and our PK is 26th. Maybe he should get a pass on the PP since we have such an obvious lack of scoring talent, but I don't think there's any excuse for our PK to be so bad. Gibson alone should buoy that number to a respectable level. If Edmonton can kill penalties at an 84% rate, I don't see any excuse for ours to be so bad.
Having said that it's also hard to pinpoint any glaring mistakes he's made. The ice time is generally spread out pretty evenly and there's no one player that gets a ton of ice time they don't deserve (like a Bieksa). 5 on 5 results are below average but not terrible. I'm not going to get into criticizing systems or set plays or any of that since I'll concede that Eakins knows 10,000X more about hockey than I ever will.
He definitely didn't have a lot to work with. Of the d-men he's had, you could make a pretty good argument that none of Holzer, Irwin, Hakanpaa, Guhle, Larsson, or Del Zotto should even be in the NHL (at least on a contending team, and I know some of those guys have looked fine for us). Of the forwards he had, Getzlaf has clearly slowed down, who knows what happened to Rakell, and the rest are solid players who lack high-end offensive skill.
The most contentious issue with Eakins is the lack of development of the younger players. I'm not as down on them as some here are, but the lack of tangible results is a bit discouraging. Still, they're all pretty young and some have shown signs of improvement as the season's gone along. Terry in particular I thought looked great before he got hurt the last time. Jones' stats aren't great but I love watching him play and he has flashes of skill every once in a while.
Maybe my biggest problem with Eakins, and I know this might be controversial, is that I think he might be nuts. He just always has this very insane look in his eye and his manner of speaking is very strange. His Twitter profile picture is bizarre (why does an NHL coach even have an official Twitter account?), and the fact that he keeps a Navy seal around who travels with the team is equally bizarre. Just something to keep an eye on going forward.
Stay safe everyone.