17to85

I am skeptical though... Was it Bene, or the fact he had Solomon and Bighill as well as a glut of talent on the D? Those two boys alone would make a lot of coaches look better than they are. That being said- I would be cautiously optimistic if we got Bene. What role did he have in making those players into the beasts they are? Guys who wind up having successful players around them all the time probably have a pretty big hand in making said players better. Guy did earn himself a head coaching role for his work with defenses so I don't think he's someone who just rides coattails of players.

I'm aware. My point is outside of nostalgic reminiscing, reserved for guys like Mike Riley and Cal Murphy and a few select others, there have not been any coordinators that I can think of that have not been met with complaints from a not insignificant number of people. People argue that Lapo should have been fired on his first go-around as OC because in the second year the offence dropped to 4th in the league. 4th. The grass is always greener until it's planted on our yard. Whomever is hired is just going to be the next guy some people will demand we should fire. That's what happens when you go decades without a championship. Most people are tired of 7th or 8th place finishes that are eventually followed by 1st or 2nd finishes only to see the team completely collapse again. Also I don't remember anyone every bitching about burke as a DC. He ran a great D while here as a DC his trouble started when he took a role he isn't good at. I was going to say No one complained about Tim Burke as a DC because he was good at that aspect of things. It was just as a head coach he was an outright failure of spectacular proportions.

there is but it's a sliding scale depending on who you're trying to prop up or drag down at the time.

He has a better track record in the AHL than Eakins had, he has actually got a lot of production out of Oiler players in the AHL. He is a very good AHL head coach and that is widely recognized around the league. The question is whether he can translate it to the NHL or not. He is very different from Eakins though. Eakins just oozes arrogance and acts like he's the smartest man in the room, Nelson is much more humble and just goes about his business. I disagree that the problems are heart and compete. They play hard they just don't always play smart. One of the things Ralph Kreuger said was that sometimes young players can be over coached, sometimes you just have to give them simple tasks and let them play hockey. That appears to be a big part of what's wrong in Edmonton. Hell even the panel during the game pointed out that they looked like they were playing scared, and that's been happening for a while. It's interesting people like to only look at the second period and not the push back they had in the 3rd. They carried a lot of the play after that just weren't able to get any pucks to go in. A lot of people just grasp at the low hanging fruit and assume that if you work hard you're going to win, it's not that simple. In a league where everyone works hard you have to work hard in the right ways.

replacing coached midseason is just a waste. You gotta decide in the offseason if he's good enough or not and if there are any questions then you move on to someone you trust.

?

and yet I can't help but wonder if the scheme on offense did enough to help the players we did have... I agree that the talent on D is better, but a lot of that is because we use most of the NIs on offense and NIs are the biggest problem spot on the roster.

People in winnipeg over reacting? no way!

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. For a Canadian on the corner, he was great. Would we be worse off if he left? Yes. That statement is skewing your perception. Just because it's a low bar doesn't mean his play was great. He didn't **** up too badly that's all you really need out of the guy but I would suggest that if he leaves you just play an american in that position and actually improve your secondary overover all. Can likely find a way to replace the NI somewhere else. Maybe a linebacker position, maybe find a DL, maybe they even go with 3 receivers, or 4 OL.He's a useful player to have but he wasn't great. Starting Canadian corner who didn't embarrass himself continually and you don't see that as a great signing? At the very least, he gets bumped to 5th DB/STer/excellent backup... I'm confused as to why this irks you so.. He proved more then capable last season in a wonky defense.. Imma chalk it up to being argumentative simply to be argumentative because you had so much etch defense left to use and can't now lol my issue is with the unwarranted superlatives being tossed about

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. For a Canadian on the corner, he was great. Would we be worse off if he left? Yes. That statement is skewing your perception. Just because it's a low bar doesn't mean his play was great. He didn't **** up too badly that's all you really need out of the guy but I would suggest that if he leaves you just play an american in that position and actually improve your secondary over all. Can likely find a way to replace the NI somewhere else. Maybe a linebacker position, maybe find a DL, maybe they even go with 3 receivers, or 4 OL. He's a useful player to have but he wasn't great.

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"