Edmonton, AB (SportsNetwork.com) – The Edmonton Oilers fired head coach Dallas Eakins on Monday.<\/p>\n
Eakins was in just his second season with the perennially rebuilding Oilers, who reside in the Western Conference basement with a 7-19-5 record. They are tied with the Carolina Hurricanes for the fewest points in the league at 19.<\/p>\n
General manager Craig MacTavish will take over the coaching duties on an interim basis before transitioning the team over to Todd Nelson, who joins the staff as an assistant coach.<\/p>\n
MacTavish, who coached the Oilers for eight seasons from 2000-09, will hand the reins to Nelson once he is comfortable. Nelson was in his fifth season coaching the Oilers’ American Hockey League affiliate in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n
The Barons made four playoff appearances under Nelson, including two trips to the conference finals.<\/p>\n
Eakins’ dismissal comes as the Oilers are in a free fall, having lost 15 of their last 16 games (1-11-4).<\/p>\n
“I had no good reason to do this other than performance,” MacTavish said.<\/p>\n
Edmonton went 29-44-9 last season under Eakins, who landed his first NHL head coaching job on the strength of a four-year stint directing the Toronto Marlies, the top minor league affiliate of the Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n
Eakins was the Oilers’ fourth head coach since MacTavish’s run.<\/p>\n
Edmonton hasn’t reached the playoffs since losing to the Hurricanes in the 2006 Stanley Cup Finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Edmonton, AB (SportsNetwork.com) – The Edmonton Oilers fired head coach Dallas Eakins on Monday. Eakins was in just his second season with the perennially rebuilding Oilers, who reside in the Western Conference basement with a 7-19-5 record. They are tied with the Carolina Hurricanes for the fewest points in the league at 19. General manager […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27238,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27231\/revisions\/27238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}