Dallas Eakins..what went wrong?

[The Lunatic Fridge]

The guy's name is Dallas and he is not part of the Stars organization.

Rookie mistake.

 

[Mr Positive]

Every coach has to start somewhere, and if a coach can ever be considered as sort of prospect, Eakins was a highly ranked prospect that was a bust.

You just can't know how good a coach really is until you try them in the NHL

 

[CH25]

"Advanced stats"

 

[lawrence]

Nothing went wrong. Edmonton hired him based on the hype stirred by Derren Dregger. It was funny becuase Canucks fans also wanted Dallas Eakins for some stupid reason.

Edmonton also need to stop going after rookie coaches at this point, and stop going after rookie GM's too.

 

[McDNicks17]

One word. Arrogance.

He famously said he was going to break the players down and then build them up. The problem was he was far too inept to build the players back up. It resulted in every single player on the team regressing.

 

[Atas2000]

Enourmously valuable guy. You can take Dallas Eakins' example and write a book about what you never ever should do as a NHL head coach.

No, seriously, all of it in one person. It was ridiculous. A bad coach, not a player's coach, obsessed with some stats instead of the real game, explicitly narcisstic, two deaf ears for whatever voice of reason, critisizm etc.. The list is huge.

I don't know if Nelson is a great coach or just a decent one. And that's again Dallas Eakins' role as an anti-role model. Nearly everybody looks like a NHL coach after Eakins.

 

[Ola]

I think it’s pretty clear by now that Eakins was a monumental failure as an NHL head coach, so, in situations like that, I believe it is a combination of factors that caused him to fall flat on his face so spectacularly. Removing the factors (like a flawed roster) that Eakins couldn’t control, I’ll just discuss some I feel that he could.

His first error was probably in how he chose to make his initial communication to his players. It’s been reported that during the summer prior to his rookie NHL coaching campaign, he sent letters out to the Oiler athletes describing how he wanted them to all be in shape for training camp. That’s going to leave a negative, demanding, and potentially hostile impression with the members of the team, because his introduction to them was all about his expectations of them and nothing about what they needed from him. To those who already come to camp in prime condition, it will be condescending—like explaining to a member of the police force the importance of not committing burglary. To those who aren’t disposed to show up fit, it’s probably not going to change their training regime and is just going to incline them to internally revolt against whatever demands he places on them, planting the seeds of discontent against the coach before they’ve even met him. Basically, Eakins created a chance of conflict with players before he met them because he chose a combative manner of introduction, and he gave some players who he might not have needed to offend (since they would have shown up to camp fit) a reason to be miffed with him. Not the best first move, in a nutshell.

Building off the theme of Eakins’ bad first impression (which is really hard to get back), Eakins also came across as the most arrogant coach, rookie or veteran, that I’ve ever seen give an NHL interview. Before he had even coached his first NHL game, he was speaking as if he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. I’ve read enough comments from other hockey fans to know that almost everyone shared this impression of the guy, so I bring it up because if fans react so negatively to him based on a relatively short exposure in interviews, what must it be like for the players to be around that all the time in practices, games, on the road, and in the locker room? Probably extremely grating, and that might be a charitable understatement.

Eakins also seemed very bent on establishing himself as a control freak and dictator in the minutia of the lives of media and players alike. With the media, I think from the time he arrived in Edmonton, he was insistent that their donuts be replaced with fruit and veggie platters, which isn’t going to endear him to the local reporters, and showed that he was so obsessed with fitness that he forgot to respect some traditions already in place in the organization and people’s basic rights to make choices about what they eat. He could easily have just asked for platters of fruits and veggies to be placed out along with the donuts, thus giving people a healthy choice, and presenting himself in a positive light as the giver of something extra—but instead he chose to snatch something away in a sanctimonious fashion, which portrayed him in a negative light.

Likewise, and more significantly, with his own players, he changed the decor of the locker room, removing a lot of the dynasty Oiler era momentos (thus showing more disregard for the franchise’s history) and putting up some weird slogans about cutting wood and carrying water. If he really wanted to give his players a chance to forge a new identity as a team, he would have let them have input into the decoration of the locker room, but instead he made all the decisions for himself—so it became his locker room, not theirs. He also took away their ping pong table. It’s a little thing, but it takes away some of their freedom and fun, and it’s a basically needless change designed to highlight his authority over their lives. It’s also a pretty foolish thing for a rookie coach to focus on when he should be concerned with honing systems.

Perhaps because he was such a control freak, Eakins seemed to coach through fear when he bothered to coach at all. He benched Yakupov a ton, for instance, and didn’t really appear to try other ways of getting through to the young man. Techniques like that might work in the AHL, where players have to listen and obey the coach if they don’t want to end up in the hockey wilderness forever, but in the NHL, where players have already made the big leagues, they don’t necessarily have to bend over backward to do whatever coach says. Fear isn’t always the best motivator, but it looked like it was the only one that Eakins knew how to draw upon.

I qualified the coaching through fear when he bothered to coach at all, because I noticed that behind the bench, Eakins rarely interacted physically or verbally with his players. Instead, he spent most of his time there preening for the cameras and flicking his hair back (why he didn’t get a hair cut if it was in his eyes all the time, I’ll never know), resembling a B Grade actor auditioning for a role as a coach in a Hollywood film rather than an actual NHL coach. Players who were traded from the Oilers to various other NHL teams also commented on how much faster the pace of the practices with their new teams were. This leads me to believe that Eakins ran practices that were very slow paced, perhaps loaded with him yammering on about fitness and swarm defense as he did in his press conferenes ad nauseam. No wonder players tuned him out. After five seconds of listening to most of his interviews, I did the same.

Eakins also had a lot of bizarre theories about hockey. His swarm defense was total chaos that was completely ineffective with his team but he clung to it stubbornly even when the win-loss column should have made it apparent to even a casual fan that the method wasn’t working. I also remember reading a quote of his where he compared hockey to football, suggesting with sincerity that it was crazy players like Jonathan Toews didn’t have to memorize a playbook, which indicates to me that Eakins couldn’t spot the difference between static football and free-flow hockey. That sets of major alarms about his ability to think strategy in hockey, since he plainly overshoots what it is possible for NHL players to recognize and do in real time in hockey, which is kind of bizarre since I think he played in about 100 NHL games as a player, so you would assume he would know better, but I guess he’s just not a great learner or critical thinker. He also was a lover of stats, which in itself is fine, but he didn’t have a clue how to interpret them. I recall him bragging after the Oilers were defeated by the LA Kings that his team had outshot the Kings, but he didn’t seem to comprehend that his team had outshot the Kings since the Kings had jumped to a multi-goal lead in the first period and just turtled to victory after that. Stats are only as useful as the people collecting and interpreting them, and Eakins wasn’t very good at understanding how to look at the nuances of data to arrive at even elementary conclusions. Essentially, he was bursting with new ideas—thought he was God’s gift to coaching hockey—but really these notions were so out in left field that they weren’t even in the stadium.

TL;DR: Eakins comes across as an arrogant control freak who coaches through fear and is filled to the ears with bizarre ideas about hockey that he chose to inflict upon players and media rather than doing his job behind the bench and in practice. He was more concerned with his image—flicking his hair and flipping out at Taylor Hall when water got on his suit—than he was in actually understanding NHL systems and statistics. He was more focused on how he sounded—making sure he spewed out some nice catch phrases—than he was with winning hockey games. He was a socially awkward self-promoter (who probably wasn’t even self-aware enough to know how terribly he presented himself to others) who stirred up needless conflicts and wasn’t prepared for the NHL gig that he landed. No wonder his players and the media didn’t like him.

Very well written post, but 100% nonsense from my POV.

Where should EDM have finnished in the standings during these years in your opinion? Last ok, where did they finnish? Last.

That's the problem. This is a very poorly constructed team by McTavish. And I know a cluster **** when I see one, been a Rangerfan for the last 30 years.

You cannot develop young players with a team constructed as EDM has been the last years — and EDM is trying to build a team 100% by developing young players. I mean the plan is so flawed lol I dont know where to start. Like what's the plan for the blueline?? Who is going to be the leader there? Some kid that is 19 today? Yeah he could get there in 6-7 years. Are all the forwards to be wasted during those 6-7 years?

I figure you are real young, but those of us that has been around a bit longer have probably seen at least 10-12 teams taking the route EDM are now. A big portion of these teams fail (ATL and co, for example), and some make it (Pit for example). EDM has not even remotely been able to do anything necessary to make it.

What is the plan in EDM? What is the identity? ROFLMAO it's still 100% unknown after all these years, they gone from one extreme in Kreuger to another in Eakins. Then tou had Renney before that who was a bit of an extreme himself in the Detroit mold. It's litterary been all over. Now back to some AHL system that is stone age. This actually makes me a bit sick that a NHL team can be managed this poorly. What the heck, aren't EDM going to try to have a bit of a dynamic transition game anymore? All successful teams have it but EDM have opted to go in a different direction playing AHL hockey??

But please go ahead and believe that the problem in EDM is a waterbottle incident if it makes u feel better. I get a bit pissed because it's due to all this BS notions the mess can go on, nobody calling it for what it is. Next year you'll have McD or Eichel, then it will change right? Guys like Yaks, Draistl and co will be developed properly right? The blueline will step up as Stanley Cup winning caliber right? Led by the kids. Sounds great, the key for the new coach is just not to care about his hair and get water on his suit and EDM will win it all, sounds like a plan!!

 

[Menzinger]

I think some people are really over-exaggerating his reliance on so called 'fancy stats'. Point is, the Swarm defense is just a bad idea. Carlyle used it all the time with the leafs, and got disastrous results.

I personally never quite liked him with the Marlies for his tendency to throw young players under the bus to the media.

 

[McAsuno]

He's hot garbage. That's what he is. From his fitness crap, to his "accountability" that only applied to Yakupov, to his mess of a so called swarm defence, to a crap special teams, and finally using corsi to make himself feel better when the oilers lose. Eakins is a complete joke. Krueger leads a significantly weaker roster into a better standings. Eakins had most of the damn roster regress under him. Now Nelson comes in, and the oilers are playing at .500 along with players that look extremely rejuvenated in Eberle and Yakupov especially.

The fact that Eakins had to remove a ping pong table in the oilers room just adds into the fact that the players were even more miserable playing under him. People can try to sympathize with Eakins, and say the oilers roster is bad. But if Todd Nelson has this club at a .500 along with the whole team actually playing to an NHL type of level, then what's Eakins excuse? Its cute how the media such as TSN as an example, tried to baby up Eakins and act like he had no fault. -cough- Dreger.

 

[ForeverJerseyGirl]

Very well written post, but 100% nonsense from my POV.

Where should EDM have finnished in the standings during these years in your opinion? Last ok, where did they finnish? Last.

That's the problem. This is a very poorly constructed team by McTavish. And I know a cluster **** when I see one, been a Rangerfan for the last 30 years.

You cannot develop young players with a team constructed as EDM has been the last years — and EDM is trying to build a team 100% by developing young players. I mean the plan is so flawed lol I dont know where to start. Like what's the plan for the blueline?? Who is going to be the leader there? Some kid that is 19 today? Yeah he could get there in 6-7 years. Are all the forwards to be wasted during those 6-7 years?

I figure you are real young, but those of us that has been around a bit longer have probably seen at least 10-12 teams taking the route EDM are now. A big portion of these teams fail (ATL and co, for example), and some make it (Pit for example). EDM has not even remotely been able to do anything necessary to make it.

What is the plan in EDM? What is the identity? ROFLMAO it's still 100% unknown after all these years, they gone from one extreme in Kreuger to another in Eakins. Then tou had Renney before that who was a bit of an extreme himself in the Detroit mold. It's litterary been all over. Now back to some AHL system that is stone age. This actually makes me a bit sick that a NHL team can be managed this poorly. What the heck, aren't EDM going to try to have a bit of a dynamic transition game anymore? All successful teams have it but EDM have opted to go in a different direction playing AHL hockey??

Oh, I won't disagree with you about the other problems in Edmonton with the Oilers. I was just focusing on the factors Eakins could control, not those outside of his. When a franchise is in the sewers as much as Edmonton is, obviously many people are at fault. My post was just intended to explore what Eakins did wrong, not what anyone else did wrong.

ETA: I alluded to factors beyond his control in my first paragraph of my previous post like the flawed roster.

 

[McDNicks17]

What is the plan in EDM? What is the identity? ROFLMAO it's still 100% unknown after all these years, they gone from one extreme in Kreuger to another in Eakins. Then tou had Renney before that who was a bit of an extreme himself in the Detroit mold. It's litterary been all over. Now back to some AHL system that is stone age. This actually makes me a bit sick that a NHL team can be managed this poorly. What the heck, aren't EDM going to try to have a bit of a dynamic transition game anymore? All successful teams have it but EDM have opted to go in a different direction playing AHL hockey??

Huh?

Nelson has them running a pretty typical NHL system.

 

[Crede777]

Stupid front offices hire stupid coaches...

 

[Semin]

Hes a gigantic D-bag who got too much smoke blown up his *** by dreger. His ideologies just didn't work in the NHL and he was too stubborn to adapt and change.

He tried to be a dictator and controlling everyone from his players to media.

I get it, you like fitness. I do as well, Dallas. I don't cram it down everyone's throat.


I also want to cut his bangs, **** that guy.

 

[Woodrow]

He was pretty much doomed from the get go. A revolving door of coaches and they hire a rookie coach who preaches fitness and accountability....

 

[I Like Foolish Posts]

Very well written post, but 100% nonsense from my POV.

Where should EDM have finnished in the standings during these years in your opinion? Last ok, where did they finnish? Last.

That's the problem. This is a very poorly constructed team by McTavish. And I know a cluster **** when I see one, been a Rangerfan for the last 30 years.

You cannot develop young players with a team constructed as EDM has been the last years — and EDM is trying to build a team 100% by developing young players. I mean the plan is so flawed lol I dont know where to start. Like what's the plan for the blueline?? Who is going to be the leader there? Some kid that is 19 today? Yeah he could get there in 6-7 years. Are all the forwards to be wasted during those 6-7 years?

I figure you are real young, but those of us that has been around a bit longer have probably seen at least 10-12 teams taking the route EDM are now. A big portion of these teams fail (ATL and co, for example), and some make it (Pit for example). EDM has not even remotely been able to do anything necessary to make it.

What is the plan in EDM? What is the identity? ROFLMAO it's still 100% unknown after all these years, they gone from one extreme in Kreuger to another in Eakins. Then tou had Renney before that who was a bit of an extreme himself in the Detroit mold. It's litterary been all over. Now back to some AHL system that is stone age. This actually makes me a bit sick that a NHL team can be managed this poorly. What the heck, aren't EDM going to try to have a bit of a dynamic transition game anymore? All successful teams have it but EDM have opted to go in a different direction playing AHL hockey??

But please go ahead and believe that the problem in EDM is a waterbottle incident if it makes u feel better. I get a bit pissed because it's due to all this BS notions the mess can go on, nobody calling it for what it is. Next year you'll have McD or Eichel, then it will change right? Guys like Yaks, Draistl and co will be developed properly right? The blueline will step up as Stanley Cup winning caliber right? Led by the kids. Sounds great, the key for the new coach is just not to care about his hair and get water on his suit and EDM will win it all, sounds like a plan!!

What a pathetic attempt at an analysis here. Dallas Eakins was an atrocious coach for exactly the reasons that ForeverJerseyGirl detailed. Absolutely the water bottle incident should be questioned, somebody of Dallas Eakins' stature has no business acting in that manner towards his team of professionals. Of course, the Oilers have a pretty terrible roster but Eakins only brought the team into an even worse position. You only need to look at how the team has performed post-Eakins to see proof, the team looks far better on the ice and results are starting to show with an increased point percentage under Todd Nelson.

 

[MarkGio]

*on his suit jacket

he came out to start the 3rd with a new suit jacket on

just a neurotic, quirky kind of dude that never should have been near a position of authority for an NHL club

Which is pretty funny given his chopping wood and carrying water slogans. I've never met a lumberjack who's afraid to get a little wet. You work in light rain when the season is short. Don't get me started on an African carrying water. As if they'd be scared of a little splash!

 

[Burnt Biscuits]

Very well written post, but 100% nonsense from my POV.

Where should EDM have finnished in the standings during these years in your opinion? Last ok, where did they finnish? Last.

That's the problem. This is a very poorly constructed team by McTavish. And I know a cluster **** when I see one, been a Rangerfan for the last 30 years.

You cannot develop young players with a team constructed as EDM has been the last years — and EDM is trying to build a team 100% by developing young players. I mean the plan is so flawed lol I dont know where to start. Like what's the plan for the blueline?? Who is going to be the leader there? Some kid that is 19 today? Yeah he could get there in 6-7 years. Are all the forwards to be wasted during those 6-7 years?

I figure you are real young, but those of us that has been around a bit longer have probably seen at least 10-12 teams taking the route EDM are now. A big portion of these teams fail (ATL and co, for example), and some make it (Pit for example). EDM has not even remotely been able to do anything necessary to make it.

What is the plan in EDM? What is the identity? ROFLMAO it's still 100% unknown after all these years, they gone from one extreme in Kreuger to another in Eakins. Then tou had Renney before that who was a bit of an extreme himself in the Detroit mold. It's litterary been all over. Now back to some AHL system that is stone age. This actually makes me a bit sick that a NHL team can be managed this poorly. What the heck, aren't EDM going to try to have a bit of a dynamic transition game anymore? All successful teams have it but EDM have opted to go in a different direction playing AHL hockey??

But please go ahead and believe that the problem in EDM is a waterbottle incident if it makes u feel better. I get a bit pissed because it's due to all this BS notions the mess can go on, nobody calling it for what it is. Next year you'll have McD or Eichel, then it will change right? Guys like Yaks, Draistl and co will be developed properly right? The blueline will step up as Stanley Cup winning caliber right? Led by the kids. Sounds great, the key for the new coach is just not to care about his hair and get water on his suit and EDM will win it all, sounds like a plan!!

I always like looking at the success of coaches by their goal differential and how it changed from their predecessor, it is somewhat of a fluid thing and not always fair because of having different rosters to work with, but our rosters under Eakins on paper was better then his 2 predecessors.

• Pat Quinn (09-10 season) goal differential= -70 (56 goals worse then the previous season (MacTavish= prior Head coach))
• Tom Renney (10-11 season) goal differential= -76 (6 goals worse then the previous season)
• Tom Renney (11-12 season) goal differential= -27 (49 goals better then the previous season)
• Ralph Krueger (12-13 season *pro-rated to 82 games (based off 48 games)*) goal differential= -15 (12 goals better then the previous season)
• Dallas Eakins (13-14 season) goal differential= -67 (52 goals worse then the previous season)
• Dallas Eakins (14-15 season *pro-rated to 82 games (based off 31 games)*) goal differential = -98 (31 goals worse then the previous season)

I don't think their is much reason to defend Eakins, the Oilers were showing improvement and regressed massively while he was here, his only saving grace is blaming it on the goaltending which was admittedly quite poor. Eakins time as an Oiler was best marked by arrogance, he came in teaching an overly convoluted system and only after a long period of failure admitted the players we had weren't ready for it and needed to be schooled on defensive fundamentals. He also refused to watch any game film of the team prior to his 1st day on the job, he said he didn't want it to color his impressions of the team but was not at all aware of individual player strengths/weaknesses and how to best utilize them, he repeatedly made mistakes prior coaches made in how he deployed people, such as line pairings that were shown to be highly ineffective or bad PK alignments. He came off as very abrasive and did get on the wrong side of a lot of players with how he acted and with his fitness letters, while the Oiler players knew better then to openly speak out about him in public for P.R. reasons, a lot of rumors have circled the city about people who talked to Oiler players or who know them well and many core members of the team were emphatic that the team would not win a thing as long as Eakins was coach.

 

[uncommonsense52]

He never recovered from losing Rose.

The Oilers Coach Victorious is wrong!

 

[USC Trojans]

Despite what the players may have said in interviews, I think most of them hated Eakins. You can tell that they gave up on him on most nights.

 

[Tak7]

Wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It's unfortunate.

I think fundamentally he's a pretty good coach who tries to preach the right principles. I just think the situation in Edmonton was so far-gone that not even a Hall of Fame coach could have reeled things back in.

I hope he's assistant somewhere again next year, hopefully giving himself the platform to take another head coach job again. Would like to see him get another shot. For some reason I just don't buy into the fact that he's this bad. Everyone associated with the Marlies in Toronto adored him

 

[Del Preston]

He's an idiot. The moron that hired Eakins is still going on the radio and praising him for being a great coach too.

 

[Hynh]

An unwarranted sense of self-importance and a lack of adaptability is what did him in. I wouldn't trust him to coach an AHL team.

 

[orcatown]

Hairgate says it all.

 

[Bourne Endeavor]

I think some people are really over-exaggerating his reliance on so called 'fancy stats'. Point is, the Swarm defense is just a bad idea. Carlyle used it all the time with the leafs, and got disastrous results.

I personally never quite liked him with the Marlies for his tendency to throw young players under the bus to the media.

It's not so much his reliance, but his inability to comprehend 'fancy stats' that became the problem. As ForeverJerseyGirl outlined, Eakins had an odd habit of touting advanced stats with little to no context. He took the fact Edmonton outshot teams has a positive, completely ignoring the how or why. Put simply, he had a confirmation bias; looking for the stats that fit his conclusion and ignoring the rest.

In that regard, he wasn't even a stats guy. Just arrogant.

 

[Bill Waters*]

Eakins also had a lot of bizarre theories about hockey. His swarm defense was total chaos that was completely ineffective with his team but he clung to it stubbornly even when the win-loss column should have made it apparent to even a casual fan that the method wasn’t working. I also remember reading a quote of his where he compared hockey to football, suggesting with sincerity that it was crazy players like Jonathan Toews didn’t have to memorize a playbook, which indicates to me that Eakins couldn’t spot the difference between static football and free-flow hockey. That sets of major alarms about his ability to think strategy in hockey, since he plainly overshoots what it is possible for NHL players to recognize and do in real time in hockey, which is kind of bizarre since I think he played in about 100 NHL games as a player, so you would assume he would know better, but I guess he’s just not a great learner or critical thinker. He also was a lover of stats, which in itself is fine, but he didn’t have a clue how to interpret them. I recall him bragging after the Oilers were defeated by the LA Kings that his team had outshot the Kings, but he didn’t seem to comprehend that his team had outshot the Kings since the Kings had jumped to a multi-goal lead in the first period and just turtled to victory after that. Stats are only as useful as the people collecting and interpreting them, and Eakins wasn’t very good at understanding how to look at the nuances of data to arrive at even elementary conclusions. Essentially, he was bursting with new ideas—thought he was God’s gift to coaching hockey—but really these notions were so out in left field that they weren’t even in the stadium.

Excellent post. Could be the basis for a book.