The Edmonton Oilers' revolving door of coaches is taking another turn.
The Oilers announced on Monday that they have fired coach Dallas Eakins after one-and-a-half seasons behind the team's bench. For the Oilers, it will be their fifth coaching since the 2008-09 season, and since current general manager Craig MacTavish's eight-year run between 2000-01 and '08-09, none of the Oilers coaches that followed him have lasted more than two seasons.
In his 113 games behind the Oilers' bench the team won just 36 games and is currently mired in a slump that has seen them win just three of their past 21 games.
MacTavish will step behind the bench for the time being and transition the coaching job over to Todd Nelson, who will finish the season as the interim coach.
When MacTavish gave his state of the Oilers address a couple of weeks ago to address the team's current failings on the ice, he not only insisted that it was an improved hockey club desite the lack of results, but he even talked about how a coaching change wouldn't do any good because the new coach would simply come in and deliver the same message.
Apparently a lot changed over the next couple of games, with Sunday's lifeless effort against the New York Rangers being the final straw.
At this point, one of two things is true when it comes to the Oilers given the number of coaching changes the team has gone through over the past six seasons with the same results on the ice: Either coaching is not the problem with the Oilers, or the people in charge of selecting and hiring the coaches are doing a poor job identifying good ones.
It's likely, if not possible, that both are true.
Either way, the responsibility falls on the same people in the front office, and until those changes are made, this mess probably isn't going to get fixed anytime soon.
That's not to totally excuse Eakins. It was his first NHL coaching experience with a young team and it turned out to be a brutal combination, specifically when it came to the Oilers' defensive zone play that was a consistent disaster, and a complex system with a limited roster was definitely a part in that. They were also brutal on special teams, including on the power play where the Oilers should have at least had enough top-line talent to be even a passable unit.
But again, he's not the first coach that has failed in Edmonton recently, and the fact that they keep going through different suits behind the bench while getting the exact same results speaks of a much larger problem. When addressing the media on Monday, MacTavish said "there is blood all over my hands" when it comes to the makeup of the team.
The roster is badly flawed with an inept defense, only two NHL quality centers and goaltending that has completely abandoned them. Put all of that together and you have the mess that is currently unfolding in Edmonton.
Just consider for a moment the sequence of events that led the Oilers to their current position with MacTavish back behind the bench, even if only temporarily.
After coaching the team for eight years and missing the playoffs in each of the final three seasons, MacTavish was fired in 2009 by then general manager Steve Tambellini. Three years later, and after MacTavish had spent time coaching in the American Hockey League, Tambellini decided to bring MacTavish back as a member of the hockey operations department. In April of 2013, Tambellini was fired as general manager and replaced by MacTavish. Now, MacTavish is stepping back behind the bench to transition the job to somebody else.
You know, it's really not much of a mystery as to why this team hasn't won anything except a few draft lotteries in nearly a decade.
