17to85

Nowhere near enough credit for a guy like Bucknor ... he played great for us last year. Great? No let's not get delusional here. He was adequate. You bring the guy back for sure but let's not pretend the team wouldn't have continued along just fine without him.

Not going to lie I am disappointed in this news just because I was kind of looking forward to the absolute meltdown certain posters would have had on here if he'd been kept. Not unhappy from an on field stand point. I don't think he was as bad as a lot of people said, but I do prefer a more traditional defense so that should happen now.

There was always more talent on this team than people were willing to admit. Burke was a terrible coach that made guys look bad and there's a few key positions that are lacking, but Joe Mack could find players who can play the game. 17to85 you really comfuse me; just the other day you are saying I don't think it's the coaching but the talent, but today you are saying we have much more talent than most realize but the coach was just bad, but we have the similar talent with different coaches and now the talent is bad but the coaching is not the issue I just don't know where you stand can you clarify? Is our talent on our team, terrible, needs improvement, satisfactory, above average or exceeding? Is our coaching on our team terrible, needs improvement, satisfactory, above average or exceeding? That would definitely help us better understand where the team stands on talent and coaching at least from your perspective. I said Tim Burke was a bad coach and that they were lacking in a few key areas talent wise. I also said Joe Mack could find players who could play the game. Kyle Walters and his staff need to prove they are as capable as Mack was at finding American players. Notice how the guys getting NFL looks are the ones brought here by the previous GM? If you don't understand I suggest going back and reading things again. It's all laid out pretty straight forward. There is a seperation between the current GM and previous GM and current coaches and previous coaches.

Are we so far gone as a team that Bucknor is a huge signing?

There was always more talent on this team than people were willing to admit. Burke was a terrible coach that made guys look bad and there's a few key positions that are lacking, but Joe Mack could find players who can play the game.

Or is it because the Oilers are trying to win with back-up goalies? Both goalies have shown better in the past. Dubnyk, Bryzgalov, Fasth, Scrivens they all saw their numbers drop under Eakins. Bryzgalov Fasth and Scrivens all came in last year and looked real good, but time spent with Eakins killed them. It's quite apparent that a lot of people don't really follow the Oilers to see just how bad Eakins ****** that team up. I'm still laughing at the fact you said the oilers were making progress before Eakins.. What kinda progress? Most coaching failures? Most worst place finishes in their division? Lol. How about the fact they had increased their wins and point totals every year? Their goals against had gone down every year... you know that kind of progress, the kind you expect to see from a rebuilding team. Your comment here only proves my point that people don't actually look at what was going on there and only see "LOL 3 first overall picks" No... What I have seen is still no solution in goal, no defenseman worth mentioning and no real upward trend despite your attempt to sugarcoat.. Rebuilding? Sure.. To what? That best worst team in the conference? I get Edmonton is your team and all but there is something deeply rotten in that team.. improving every year is still improving even if you can't see past the 3 first overall picks. They went from 30th by a mile to 30th by a couple points to 29th to 24th before they hired Eakins. All this with Steve Tambellini as a GM and his big veteran additions were Fistric and Belanger. There was no veteran support at all and his asset management was real bad. Seen how Tobias Reider is doing in Phoenix? Kid was a 4th round oiler pick that Tambellini traded for a questional prospect with size. There is a reason they fired the GM a couple years ago as well. McTavish has actually done a better job adding veteran players to the team. Fayne was a real good pick up and he has been solid. He's not the big sexy name on D but he's a good player. Boyd Gordon and Matt Hendricks were good additions as veteran bottom 6 players... the problem was he fell in love with Dallas Eakins and refused to admit he made that mistake. Let's look at the game last night, was an odd game because it's too early for a lot of changes but I saw a PP that looked night and day. They changed the set up and were able to gain the zone and get shots on net. Didn't score but it wasn't a complete tire fire giving up odd man breaks short handed all night. Scrivens was fantastic, primarily because they played a much simpler coverage in the defensive zone. The 2 goals they gave up were remnants of what Eakins had them doing. Over load and pressure the puck carrier. That leaves someone wide open though and both those guys scored. Once they wash the Eakins stink of players and they stop defaulting to that it'll be better. Most people look at plays like that and see just a mistake defensively, but when you watch how they've played the past 2 seasons and listened to what Eakins was preaching you realize that leaving guys open wasn't a problem for him. That's the kind of crap that works in the AHL where the passing and shooting isn't good enough, but in the NHL guys can get passes through under pressure and wide open players can score. It made the goaltenders look terrible. Hell one game in we saw a lot more reasonable ice time distribution as well. Did you know that Eakins would regularly have Justin Schultz getting the most icetime of all oiler players? Obviously you don't watch them play but he is the last guy who should be getting top pairing ice time because he can't handle it. Eakins was the #1 problem with the teams performance. The only way it's not Eakins is if you want to point the blame to McTavish for hiring and sticking with Eakins, but in that situation the on ice play still comes down to Dallas Eakins and his ******** system that doesn't work in the NHL.

I disagree with that statement. This team doesn't have enough talent in some areas for me to think coaching is the bigger problem. They need a talent upgrade on the offensive and defensive lines and receiver before I say coaching is more of a problem than talent.

That's an old story, the trade was pretty much done but last minute Lowe got angry about something and demanded Comrie repay a signing bonus, that's what nixed that trade. Things got really personal between Lowe and Comrie back then. I remember the relationship with Comrie being bad, but I don't recall ever hearing about that potential trade. That would have been up there as one of the best/worst trades in NHL history. Well at the time Perry was still a prospect don't forget. There were some question marks about his attitude and skating. Corey Perry at the time wasn't the super star we know he turned into. He was still just a prospect. Woywitka was a pretty well thought of prospect as well, he just didn't work out like Perry did. (though he was part of the package that got Pronger so not all bad)

Well when players could score with the previous coaches but couldn't score with Eakins then yes I do blame the coach. You have to put players in a position to succeed. No true #1 defencemen on the roster and no real proven centres and a couple goaltenders who haven't been starters before but had shown decently as backups are reasons a team might not be expected to go deep into the playoffs but they're not reasons that a team should be struggling as much as Edmonton is. When the coaching is as bad as it was it makes everything look much worse. The team with Kreuger had bigger holes on the roster and much worse veterans yet Kreuger got more out of them. Yeah they still weren't a great team but they didn't go on streaks where they won 3 games out of 22 tries. They had a lethal PP and a good PK... now the PP is a liability that they'd be better off declining and the PK is average at best. I said it a lot when Tim Burke was here, good coaches make players look better. Case in point: Calgary Flames. That's a pretty gross roster but the coach has them playing well and look at the results. Confidence and putting player in a position to do well is very important in sports. Setting players up to fail is what Eakins did.

That's an old story, the trade was pretty much done but last minute Lowe got angry about something and demanded Comrie repay a signing bonus, that's what nixed that trade. Things got really personal between Lowe and Comrie back then.

someone else who doesn't watch the team play comments I see. You know what the #1 problem with the oilers is right now? No goal scoring. They can't score enough to win games. If they happen to give up a goal on a mistake which happens to every team in the league they can't get it back. Yakupov has made big strides defensively, trouble is he can't score. I am telling you Eakins crushed the offense of that team and the confidence as well. People agree that Renney and Kreuger didn't get a chance before failing and were fired simply due to impatience, but no one is saying Eakins didn't get a fair chance. He made the team worse and that's all on him. People would have been happy if the team had kept progressing. No one is under any kind of delusions about the roster, but Eakins did so many things wrong it is a true wonder he lasted as long as he did.

But the new coach of the Bombers also had a real qb to work with. The comparable with the Oilers would be the new coach having a legit goalie to work with. I don't think Eakins did a good job, but you're over the top in your blame of him for all of their problems. The Oilers have a handful of good players and two handfuls of AHLers. I think the Oilers will get better with a new coach in large part b/c they quit on Eakins, so if nothing else there'll be more effort now. But again, look at Devan Dubnyk, pre-Eakins he was .920 save %, post Eakins in Arizona he bounced back to .917%... just that one year with Eakins he was so bad and I'll tell you right now both Fasth and Scrivens are better fundamentally than Devan Dubnyk, yet their numbers dipped in the same manner under Eakins. Guy was implementing a system that gave up a lot of 10 bell scoring chances and it makes goaltenders look worse. It does a disservice to the roster to suggest that it's just the goalies playing bad. Every goalie has played bad because the system is flawed. The guy was a hack of a coach. He made every player on the roster worse, he made the team worse, much worse. He won't get another shot at NHL head coach for a long long time if ever.

Yeah but when it comes to addressing the coaching problems with Dallas Eakins you can have a loose definition, especially when you consider the issues that Tambellini had as a general manager. The year they drafted Hall they were last place in the league by a country mile. There was no one else around them in the standings. The following year they were still in last place but only by a few points. That was a pretty significant increase in their point totals. The following year they were 29th in the league and not too far back of the teams that finished just ahead of them. I think people forget that because they won the lottery and got the #1 pick but it was again an improvement in their point totals, they had moved up the standings even if it was just one spot. The year after that was the lock out season, Kreuger got half a season against only western teams and the Oilers wound up finishing in 24th spot, their biggest climb up the standings. In all those seasons their goals against had gone down. Is that not pretty much what you expect out of a rebuilding team that was at rock bottom? Tambellini was pretty inactive as a GM, he made a lot of bad trades and his free agent signings were basically busts, he could add pieces in the draft but that's about it. So they fired him and the new GM comes in and actually appears to make better moves with trades and free agents, but he doesn't like the coach that got the most out of the group and hires the over hyped Marlies coach. Well Eakins comes in and destroys players confidence, wrecks the PP which was the teams biggest weapon and the goals against shoot up to the highest levels they had been even when the team was in 30th place. This season he was on pace for even worse goals against and on pace for the lowest point totals. No one is talking about a different coach being the difference between the Oilers being a poor team and a contender, let's clear that up right now, but it appeared that the Oilers were on their way to being one of those teams that could at least maybe be a bubble playoff team and not a basement dweller... until Eakins came in and took them right back to the bottom. No one thinks they get a new coach they jump to the top of the standings, but the roster isn't the kind of roster that should be 30th in the league, but with Eakins they are. They should at very least have a good PP but they don't, their PP is a liability. Look at the last time they played Arizona for an example of how bad the PP is. I said it before, Eakins was Tim Burke levels of bad as a head coach. People used to argue with me about Burke too but look how much of a difference was made when the Bombers got rid of that sad sack head coach. That's the kind of difference a new coach can make to Edmonton. The roster now is better than it has been at any point since they started this rebuild yet the results were by far the worst, that speaks to a coach that flat out sucks at his job.

Well again we can look at the situation with Yakupov in his rookie year, Kreuger was sheltering him as best he could at the start of that season. 3rd line minutes limited opportunities and all that. His scoring streak started when there were some injuries and he got bumped up the lineup. Got to play with better players in more situations and thrived in the situation. Then Eakins came in the following year and basically treated Yakupov like he was the stereotypical Russian who was just lazy. Not the case, he was a kid who needed to be taught more than he needed the whipped cracked but it was a microcosm of what Eakins problem was. He didn't understand the players he had and didn't know how to treat them, but by the time he realized he was going about things wrong the team had already tuned him out and once that happens nothing will get them back.

Or is it because the Oilers are trying to win with back-up goalies? Both goalies have shown better in the past. Dubnyk, Bryzgalov, Fasth, Scrivens they all saw their numbers drop under Eakins. Bryzgalov Fasth and Scrivens all came in last year and looked real good, but time spent with Eakins killed them. It's quite apparent that a lot of people don't really follow the Oilers to see just how bad Eakins ****** that team up. I'm still laughing at the fact you said the oilers were making progress before Eakins.. What kinda progress? Most coaching failures? Most worst place finishes in their division? Lol. How about the fact they had increased their wins and point totals every year? Their goals against had gone down every year... you know that kind of progress, the kind you expect to see from a rebuilding team. Your comment here only proves my point that people don't actually look at what was going on there and only see "LOL 3 first overall picks"

Or is it because the Oilers are trying to win with back-up goalies? Both goalies have shown better in the past. Dubnyk, Bryzgalov, Fasth, Scrivens they all saw their numbers drop under Eakins. Bryzgalov Fasth and Scrivens all came in last year and looked real good, but time spent with Eakins killed them. It's quite apparent that a lot of people don't really follow the Oilers to see just how bad Eakins ****** that team up.

Hall is a flat out super star, if you want him start with something you absolutely don't want to give up then add to it. This is why he won't be traded. GMs on the hot seat don't get to trade super star players because it's bad asset management. The Oilers will let Todd Nelson run the team for the year and evaluate since they're already out of the playoff race. Expect to see a lot of players value increase and suddenly the goal tending issues aren't so critical because Dallas Eakins the destroyer of goaltenders is gone. Seriously spending time with Eakins "system" has seen every single goaltender the Oilers have brought in come out looking worse.

you adding trouba to that offer?

Using avg. goals per game to account for the difference in games played, there was only 10 goals difference between Eakins' first season and the season before he was hired. But in the lock out year they also only played western teams. You'd think people in Winnipeg would have an appreciation for how firing a coach can change the fortunes of a team and I promise you Claude Noel was nowhere near as bad a coach as Eakins was. I didn't like them replacing either Renney or Kreuger, felt neither one of them really got a fair shake, but Eakins was a special kind of terrible and anyone who has followed that team knows it.

Putting him on the trade market is different than actually trading him. Remember a few weeks back after a particularly bad loss McTavish talked about everyone being on the block but how that talk quickly died down? Bob Nicholson won't let him make a bad trade just for the sake of making a trade and Nicholson has said basically just that. McTavish right now is trying very hard to save his job because the pressure is coming from the top down. He's got no takers on Eberle or Yakupov so next on the list is Hall thinking he might have value but he'll never get what he's worth and they won't let a GM on the way out make that trade.

They have a terrible defense that can't move the puck up to them. Look at the Avs. They're flooded with offensive talent up front but are in the bottom 1/3 in GF. It's because they also have a terrible defense. Not as bad as the Oilers, but still pretty bad. Justin Schultz is a purely offensive defenseman who can move the puck but he too can't get offense going. Petry is a pretty well rounded defenceman who can't get offense going, Martin Marincin was drafted with offense being the best part of his game and he can't generate points either. I'm telling you the coach sucked the offense out of that team. They could score a lot more goals before Eakins was hired. Just go compare before and after Eakins stats, they're easy to find.

How about the coach to continue the progress that had been made before he was hired? Instead he turned Yakupov from a goal scorer into a bust, he turned Justin Schultz from an offensive defenseman into a bust. He made everyone on that team worse. Guy was a product of the Toronto hype machine nothing more. He fooled the Oilers and they gave him a chance and he proved to be the worst head coach I have ever seen. He was the Tim Burke of the NHL he was that bad. Regarding Yakupov, how is that Eakins fault? Nail never adjusted to the NHL. Some players don't transition well to the NHL. He certainly wouldn't be the first. He won't be the last. The track record of coaching failures before him (which includes Pat Quinn - I'm pretty sure he knew how to coach a hockey team as his track record shows) shows overwhelmingly that the issues on the ice go well beyond Eakins. Does he have some fault in the state of the team? Of course he does. Is he primarily at fault? Not even close. To suggest otherwise is foolish. The day Edmonton gets rid of the "Good ol Boys" (When did they last do anything that resulted in a positive on the ice) the better off they'll be. The team has neglected the blue line and the crease for years. They have no size at forward. They're going to get dominated, especially in the western conference. That falls squarely on the player personnel staff. Dallas Eakins was the #1 problem in Edmonton. That problem has now been corrected, we just hope that the damage he has done isn't permanent. He destroyed the confidence of that entire group. Let's not forget that Anton Belov when he left to go back to the KHL flat out said the reason was because he wouldn't play for Eakins ever again. The players on that team very obviously hated him and never responded to him. If Eakins was problem number one, why has Edmonton had only two players drafted outside the first round SINCE 2007 play in more than 60 games in the NHL? Nothing will change until the scouts, GM, and president of player personnel decisions are addressed. Well because they aren't willing to load the team up entirely with rookies? Stats like that are highly misleading because of the situation prior to 2008 with the organization and the results of drafting so high that those players wind up going directly into the NHL. Their success with first rounders playing in the NHL in that time frame is probably way above average. I'll say it again, the team was making progress every year until Eakins was hired. He is the #1 problem with that team.

How about the coach to continue the progress that had been made before he was hired? Instead he turned Yakupov from a goal scorer into a bust, he turned Justin Schultz from an offensive defenseman into a bust. He made everyone on that team worse. Guy was a product of the Toronto hype machine nothing more. He fooled the Oilers and they gave him a chance and he proved to be the worst head coach I have ever seen. He was the Tim Burke of the NHL he was that bad. You nailed it with the "Toronto hype machine" comment. He was crowned the "next big thing" in coaching by the Toronto media and I never really understood why. Bull. If Edmonton didn't hire him, someone else would have. Was Toronto hyping him? Sure. Were they the only ones? Not at all. Yeah but on the other hand Vancouver interviewed him and cancelled a follow up interview because they saw that he was in no way ready to be a head coach. Dallas also interviewed him I believe and they didn't give him a chance either. McTavish bought the hype and made a bone headed move thinking he was more in demand than he really was and it cost his team 2 seasons and probably cost him his job as well. Sounds a lot like Bob Nicholson has stopped him from making any trades and forced the Eakins firing. If a GM has lost his powers to the president then it's only a matter of time until he is gone.

How about the coach to continue the progress that had been made before he was hired? Instead he turned Yakupov from a goal scorer into a bust, he turned Justin Schultz from an offensive defenseman into a bust. He made everyone on that team worse. Guy was a product of the Toronto hype machine nothing more. He fooled the Oilers and they gave him a chance and he proved to be the worst head coach I have ever seen. He was the Tim Burke of the NHL he was that bad. Regarding Yakupov, how is that Eakins fault? Nail never adjusted to the NHL. Some players don't transition well to the NHL. He certainly wouldn't be the first. He won't be the last. The track record of coaching failures before him (which includes Pat Quinn - I'm pretty sure he knew how to coach a hockey team as his track record shows) shows overwhelmingly that the issues on the ice go well beyond Eakins. Does he have some fault in the state of the team? Of course he does. Is he primarily at fault? Not even close. To suggest otherwise is foolish. The day Edmonton gets rid of the "Good ol Boys" (When did they last do anything that resulted in a positive on the ice) the better off they'll be. The team has neglected the blue line and the crease for years. They have no size at forward. They're going to get dominated, especially in the western conference. That falls squarely on the player personnel staff. Nail Yakupov came in as a rookie and led the Oilers in goal scoring, led all rookies in goal scoring and was tied for the rookie lead in points. Then they hired Eakins and he looked like he'd never played hockey before in his life. That's how it's Eakins fault. Yeah he wasn't good defensively, but at least he could ******* score goals. Eakins ruined that kid and I hope it's not permanent. I'm going to educate you on the coaching "failures" as well. McTavish stepped down as head coach, he was never fired but it seems he was smart enough to see what was coming and fled that sinking ship. Quinn was brought in as a desperate move. The thinking was he was a good coach surely he could make chicken salad out of chicken ****. He couldn't, they realized they were up the creek without a paddle so they opted to go with Renney as he was seen as a better move for a rebuild. They're not wrong there and Tom Renney did a lot of good things with that team and had them making progress, especially the young players. Trouble was the organization got impatient and opted not to renew his contract because he was leaning on the veterans rather than giving the young players ice time. So enter Ralph Kreuger (who was an assistant under Renney) He was given the head coaching role primarily because the young players liked him, and he got them to respond. It was a pretty shaky roster because Tambellini was terrible at getting actual quality NHL veterans to the team but he designed a system that worked for the team. Keep everything outside defensively and capitalize offensive on the power play. The possession metrics weren't good but they won some games and looked to be turning a corner. But then they fired Tambellini and hired Craig McTavish and he didn't like Kreugers philosophy. He wasn't going to fire him but he fell head over heels for Dallas Eakins and he made that move. Really the only coach who failed in Edmonton was Eakins, the others were victims of circumstance and impatience on the part of the management. This idea that they've neglected the blue line is ridiculous. Since they started their rebuild (the year they drafted Hall) they've drafted plenty of defencemen, two of them are breaking in now and looking good in Marincin and Klefbom, they also have Nurse, they signed guys like Ference and Fayne and Nikitin as free agents. They may not be great but they're legit NHL players, they signed one of the hottest commodities in Justin Schultz (who looked promising until you guessed it, Eakins arrived) One of the reasons their drafting appears poor is because they opted to draft a lot of size after their first round picks. Goaltending? Well Dubnyk had a .920 save precentage with Kreuger which is not bad, he's got a .917% in Phoenix this year, how'd he wind up with the super low one last year? Maybe Eakins is making goalies look bad? Happened to every goaltender they brought in. Start off good then get worse the more they were exposed to Eakins. The problem here is they made 2 mistakes with the coaching. If they'd given Renney more time or simply kept Kreuger and not hired Eakins they'd be a hell of a lot further ahead than they are. People have this idea that the roster is just sooooooooooo bad that the coach was a victim or circumstances, that's bullshit. The roster now is better on paper than it has been in years, probably almost a decade yet Dallas Eakins was getting less from that better roster than anyone else had got. Dallas Eakins was the #1 problem in Edmonton. That problem has now been corrected, we just hope that the damage he has done isn't permanent. He destroyed the confidence of that entire group. Let's not forget that Anton Belov when he left to go back to the KHL flat out said the reason was because he wouldn't play for Eakins ever again. The players on that team very obviously hated him and never responded to him.

Was the drafting bad or could the coach simply not get anything out of the players taken after the first rounds? Anton Lander was a 2nd round pick who is producing very well in the AHL but can't in the NHL.. now given how much the rest of the team struggled to score under Eakins where does the blame lie? Arcobello was an AHL superstar for point production nothing in the NHL under Eakins, again where's the problem? Marincin came up last year as a 2nd round pick and looked good but Eakins kept sitting him. Tyler Pitlick 2nd round pick has looked solid in the AHL but less useful in the NHL though his biggest problem has been injuries. I think it is a mistake to say that the drafting has been poor outside the first round as a blanket statement. I think the biggest problem is that Eakins was so bad he didn't know how to get the best out of anyone. If Nelson can get anything out of Lander for points at the NHL level that would be huge for the Oilers because he is one of those solid all around centres whose best asset going all the way back to the day he was drafted was leadership and attitude. He can play solidly in the NHL, just an offensive black hole, but that's a common problem even among proven NHL point getters with Eakins as coach. As bad as Jets fans thought Noel was as a coach, Eakins is much much much worse. Getting a real coach in there for that team is going to be all kinds of good. I mean a team with Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle, Nail Yakupov and David Perron struggles to score goals, how do you explain that?