from Mark Whicker of the LA Daily News,

The Ducks’ new guy is Dallas Eakins, who has spent four years coaching the San Diego Gulls of the American Hockey League and took them to the Calder Cup semifinals this spring. He had one NHL opportunity, at Edmonton, and will tell you he shanked it, although maybe it wasn’t him: The Oilers just hired their eighth coach since 2009.

“We have heard some good things from the young guys who came up from San Diego,” defenseman Hampus Lindholm said Monday, as Eakins was certified as the head coach, at the ultra-spiffy new Great Park facility.

“Being from Sweden, I’m more used to that type of coach, who interacts with the players more, and builds the team up into a family. We have had the old-school type of coach, I’d say. Now I hear this coach saying that we’re in this journey all together.”

General Manager Bob Murray studied Eakins closely, even before he dismissed Randy Carlyle and went behind the Ducks’ bench himself.

“The players who came up from there were always professional,” Murray said. “His team played very hard. When we were crippled with injuries, it made them crippled with injuries, and through all those overtime periods they eventually just ran out of gas.”

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