POWAY, CALIF.—Dallas Eakins was sitting in his office the other day, telling a story from a couple of jobs ago.

He was head coach of the Toronto Marlies, where one of his chief challenges was maximizing the talent of a first-round draft pick named Nazem Kadri. Kadri, at the time, was considered nearly NHL-ready. But to the coach’s eye, he wasn’t quite there. So Eakins, who had tried benching Kadri and publicly admonishing him for poor off-season conditioning while also putting a loving arm around the player now and then, tried something else. He set up a meeting with Kadri’s father, Sam.

“I explained that we just needed Naz to just be invested, like, 10 per cent more than he was,” Eakins said. “And I said to his dad — I didn’t foresee it, but if Naz fell out of line, would it be okay if I called him and let him know. And he said, ‘Absolutely. You can call me.’ ”

The next step was a meeting with Nazem in the coach’s office.

“Naz is an awesome kid. He walks in with a big smile. ‘How you doing, coach?’ I said, ‘Good.’ I said. ‘You know why I’m feeling so good, Naz?’ He goes, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘I made a new friend.’ ” And now he’s looking at me like I’m nuts.”

Eakins had laid his cell phone on his desk with Sam Kadri’s contact information displayed prominently.

“I said, ‘Look. I’ve got his number right here. That’s my new friend.’ And Naz looked at my phone and his face just went blank. And he just went, ‘Aw, man.’ So I go, ‘Now you either stay with the program here — you’re going in the right direction — but if you fall off, I’m calling your dad.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m in, coach. I’m in.’ And after that he really got going.”

Kadri, of course, has been mostly thriving in the NHL in the seasons since. But as for Eakins’s professional arc — as much as he remains one of the coaching profession’s brightest young lights, it hasn’t been exclusively ascendant. It wasn’t long after he had that close encounter with the Kadri family that Eakins was the hottest coach not yet in the NHL. When Ron Wilson was fired by the Maple Leafs, Eakins was seriously considered for the job that ultimately went to Randy Carlyle. And Eakins, of course, eventually got his NHL shot — for 113 games as head coach of the Edmonton Oilers.

This season, more than a year since his dismissal in Edmonton, he’s coaching the American Hockey League’s San Diego Gulls, the top farm club of the Anaheim Ducks. As landing spots from which to ponder one’s place in the hockey universe, there aren’t many better places than the sun-soaked hills of Southern California. Life here is good, Eakins said. The practice facility, in this bedroom community of San Diego, is lavish. There’s a theatre-style video room and a vast weight room patrolled by the team’s two strength and conditioning coaches, a far cry from Eakins’s playing days in the league, when he remembers a single athletic therapist suggesting the players do some pushups and situps. Attendance is second-best in the AHL this season, an average of 8,715. And the coach’s family — his wife and two daughters — love the outdoor-centric lifestyle, as does Eakins, an avid endurance cyclist.

As for his run in the NHL, the 48-year-old said after partaking in the various stages of mourning that go with getting fired — “there’s anger, and depression” — he can see the experience as a building block in career that is, like everyone’s, a work in progress.

“Do you get better by doing things right? Probably. But I think you get far better when you have some big adversity,” Eakins said. “I always think if you come out better on the other side, there’s not much you can’t handle. And that year and a half in Edmonton, that was about as turbulent a time as I’ve ever had.”

If Eakins has formulated a chief regret since he departed Edmonton — and he said it’s “hard not to look back and think, ‘Okay, where did I (screw) this up?’ ” — he said it was in the way he first framed the narrative of his team upon arriving.

“The first thing I did when I got there — I didn’t want our team to be called young anymore. Because all I had read about that team forever was how young they are. And I was like, ‘Are we forever young?’ We can’t be every night, ‘Yeah, we lost 4-1. But we’re young!’” he said.

The idea, Eakins said, was to make the players accountable.

“I look back and I’d like to slap myself, going, ‘You tried to speed it up,’ ” Eakins said. “I was trying to put the roof on the house and we hadn’t put up the framing yet. We just went too fast. And the group wasn’t ready to go too fast. They were immature. And they are going to be an excellent hockey team there in a couple of years.”

He has learned plenty more in the year-plus since his exit. The ordeal taught him who his friends are, for one — many individuals he encountered on his rise to the NHL have been nowhere to be seen since. (“When I get back there, I’ll remember,” he said). And it taught him about the strength of his fraternity. In the wake of his firing, he said, he was deluged with messages of support. Scotty Bowman left a long, supportive voicemail. Mike Babcock checked in to offer an encouraging word. And then there was Brian Burke.

“For the first 12 days, Brian Burke either called me or he texted me, every day. And then after that for the next two or three weeks, he checked in on me every two or three days. And then after that, for the next two or three weeks, he checked on me once a week,” Eakins said. “Burkie was incredible.”

He’s still in touch with players from his four seasons with the Marlies. Kadri, for one, cites him as a crucial influence.

“He always checks in on me. I always see how he’s doing,” Kadri said last week. “He was hard on me. But at the same time, I respect guys like that.”

Kadri remembered the time Eakins called his father and smiled.

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“I definitely think it was (unconventional) . . . but I think it worked,” Kadri said. “(Eakins) wanted to get me where I needed to be. He knew that my father meant a lot to me. In order to get through to me, he felt like he needed to get my dad on board . . . It’s not like they gave me a smack in the back of the head or anything. They just kind of talked to me and tried to get me to understand how things work and how things need to work in the future.”

As for Eakins’s future, he said he is, like most everyone not in the NHL, aiming to get back there. But speed is not of the essence.

“This isn’t, ‘Hey, you’re in the AHL — you must want to get back (to the NHL) as fast as possible,’” he said. “That time will present it self when it presents itself. The only thing I can control is come in every day and do my job, coach these guys, develop a staff. The rush to get back to the NHL? It’s impossible to be in a rush. It will come. And the only way it’s going to come is if I get every day checked off from now until that opportunity presents itself. You’ve got to be comfortable with the process.”

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