Oilers coaching change

Posted 10:44 PM ET | Comments 0

Well the Oilers fired Kruger on Saturday and I must say, I'm a bit surprised. I wasn't a very big Kruger fan and I didn't really like him but the players seemed to like him and by the sounds of it I thought MacTavish liked him too.

But I actually don't think it was actually that they wanted to fire Kruger but they wanted to hire the Toronto Marlies coach Dallas Eakins. They did and it looks like it was a good move by MacT. Eakins has been turning heads in the coaching world with his tough attitude and tactics. This is exactly the type of coach that Edmoton needs for the young kids. He's going to give the whole team a winning attitide and everyone that doesn't follow will be gonzo (a.k.a Hemsky, Horcoff).

Luckily we were able to beat out other teams like Vancouver to get Eaakins because he liked the direction that the team is going in and all the young players we have that he'll be able to coach and develop. This means we'll see the veterans being replaced with younger prospects that he'll be able to coach (I.E. Belanger will leave and Lander will come in, Rajala will jump up from the AHL).

We'll also proberly see Eakins pushing MacT to get some of the young players that played for the Marlies when he coached that he had a fondness for. These would be players like Gardiner, Scrivens, Kadri, etc. Gardiner and Scrivens jump out at me on this list because Gardiner is friends with J. Schultz and is getting thrown around the organization in Toronto and rumor is he wants out. I would happily trade our 7th overall pick this year for Gardiner so that he can play with Schultz on the top pairing. Scrivens also jumps out at me because Toronto has pretty much chosen Reimer to be their future #1 and they're looking to trade Scrivens. Could Hemsky + a pick get him away from Toronto? He would be a great 1B goalie to push Dubnyk for the starters job.

So all in all I think the coaching chance is good. Eakins looks like he#s going to be a good influencce on all our young talent. And he must be good, he can get a bunch of minor league Toronto players to the conference finals 3 years in a row!