Should Dallas Eakins Call Out a Fan?

Sorry that I've not been able to blog for the last couple of days. With Christmas today and family coming out, I wasn't able to hit the site and get some opinions up. But Christmas is over in my family. Everyone has gone to sleep right about now and it looks like it's time to talk about a story. So let's go back to a December 23rd story that came out of the Oilers camp. And it had to do with head coach Dallas Eakins.

The Oilers lost to the St. Louis 6-0 on that Saturday night. And one Oilers fan had enough. He ripped off his Oilers jersey and threw it onto the ice. It sat there until a rink attendant came and snagged it. It would've been no big deal and a frustrated fan letting his emotions take command. But Dallas Eakins was not happy. He had called the fan a "quitter." The fan was quoted as saying he was "just fed up." I would be too if I was an Oilers fan.

But to call a guy out and say that's a quitter. That's turning away the most important fans that the Oilers have. I understand that the Oilers are frustrated and its fanbase is getting restless. They haven't been to the playoffs in what seems to be a long time and no matter what they do, they don't seem to make the pieces work. Every year, they don't have good goaltending and the scoring dips from time-to-time. But by the time they try to get hot, they're already out of it. I can understand this.

Dallas Eakins needs to calm down. You can't call fans quitters. You're just asking for the fan to leave the Oilers fanbase for good and that's not a good thing. The thing that keeps teams running is their fanbase. They need it to survive in the NHL. They need their fans to help them through tough times. And right now, he did the wrong thing by calling out this guy. There have been many fans of all teams who have been frustrated with their teams' efforts time after time, but those coaches didn't call fans "quitters." And let's be honest, the Oilers are a team that doesn't quit, nor do its fans.

Eakins has to focus more on his team than on his fans. They have Ilya Brzygalov, but he's not really getting anything done for this team. And the offensive output just hasn't been there. They have to find a way to get their offense going. Ilya Bryzgalov is a good goaltender, but right now, he's letting in too many shots and the offense is not allowing him to make the saves when they are crucial in games. The Oilers are falling too far out of this playoff race. They have to find a way to get it together and get back into it. Calling the fans out is not the way to help this.