Edmonton Journal

Eakins stoic amid ugly situation

Oilers past and present have say on recent losses

- Joane Ireland jireland@edmontonjo­urnal.com

Head coach Dallas Eakins said he’s not giving up on his team, the same team that just dragged a 10-game winless streak to Winnipeg for a Wednesday night meeting with the Jets.

The Edmonton Oilers general manager, meanwhile, hasn’t said anything to the media about his next course of action so there’s no telling which way Craig MacTavish is leaning.

Oilers captain Andrew Ference had plenty to say after the Oilers were embarrasse­d to the tune of 5-2 by the Arizona Coyotes on Monday, covering off everything from the inexcusabl­e giveaways to the bad line changes to the players who “mope around” rather than working at the eliminatio­n of repetitive mistakes.

Sportsnet’s Doug MacLean even suggested on air that MacTavish should step in and replace Eakins to get a real feel for what’s going on. MacLean has been through it. When he was president and general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, he once received a call from the owner telling him he wanted him to fire the coach, and that he’d step into the vacancy.

MacLean coached for a year. Three years later he was relieved of his duties as president and GM.

“I feel (Eakins’) pain. It’s a tough, difficult, challengin­g situation to be in,” he said, “but there’s no getting out of this.”

Here are a few more things worth repeating and/or mentioning before the Oilers take on the Jets in game 26 of another lost season:

# SoSad

Former Oiler Dave Lumley, a role player who knew a thing or two about hard work back in his playing days, has often chimed in during and after games the current team has played — and not always with the soft-shoe approach.

That was definitely the case after Monday’s loss.

Lumley had this to say in a tweet he sent out: “Somebody in this organizati­on has to put their ‘Big Boy’ pants on, forget about their ego and admit they were wrong about this group. #SoSad” Short- handed goals; long-term results

Remember those two shorthande­d goals that the Coyotes’ Tobias Rieder scored to kick-start another Oilers implosion? Not only is he the second player since 2002 to score twice in under 60 seconds, he’s the first NHL rookie to ever score two shorties that quickly.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the New York Islanders’ Michael Grabner scored two in 48 seconds in an overtime win over Toronto on Feb. 27, 2014. Rieder required 58 seconds. V i ew f rom the outs ide

Franz Reindl, the president of Germany’s ice hockey federation, was in Edmonton to take in Monday’s game.

He spoke to both Rieder and Oilers centre Leon Draisaitl after the game and prior to that, spoke to Sportsnet’s Gene Principe.

While Reindl was obviously pleased to have two players from his country making their way through the NHL, he admitted he was a little surprised that Draisaitl had made the jump to the NHL at this stage of his career.

“He must have trained well in the summertime,” Reindl said. “I’m a little surprised he made the step so quick. He played with the German national team last year at the world championsh­ip, and I thought it’s maybe too early for him.”

Draisaitl played just over 14 minutes against the Coyotes, he won 63 per cent of his draws, was even on plusminus, and registered two shots on net as well as one giveaway.

Th e last wor d

We will leave the final word to team captain Ference, who had this to say after Monday’s loss:

“It has to come from players, from individual­s making up their minds to do (the right things on the ice) ...

“Constantly being considered a loser ... that’s probably the biggest punishment you can have.”

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Canada