Quote:
Originally Posted by the2bears
No. Eakins was the hot commodity at the time, and the Oilers wanted to look good by snapping him up ahead of everyone else. They did it for the accolades they thought they'd get.
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It wasn't just everyone else. Specifically it was the declining Leafs, who were fighting the inevitable but sticking with a coach of a by-gone era in a futile attempt to get blood from a stone. Meanwhile the agile, swift-thinking Oilers, who had embraced their decline to do a proper draft driven rebuild, poached the forward thinking coach for the new, analytics driven NHL for their up-and-coming dynasty right from under the noses of MLSE.
The rest is, as they say, history.