IRVINE, Calif. _ There's a muggy, backwater town in rural Florida nestled alongside the Green Swamp Wilderness Preserve. The home to the annual Kumquat Festival brags on its kumquat pies and quilt contest.
In the early 1970s, Dade City claimed about 5,000 sweat-soaked residents in a place often smothered by 90% humidity. Population today is about 7,100, and the median household income for the town some 40 miles northeast of Tampa hovers at barely $40,000, according to the U.S. Census.
"My great-grandmother basically lived in a shed in the corner, my grandparents in an old, rickety house and we lived in a trailer," recalled Dallas Eakins, in his first season as coach of the NHL's Anaheim Ducks after doing the same job the last four seasons for the San Diego Gulls. "I spent the first seven and a half years of my life dodging water moccasins. I'd go to the lake to watch them bait the massive traps for the alligators.
"Talk about a humble life."
To mistake Eakins as someone who was shaped by hockey from life's first whistle would be easy, given his upward rush through the sport _ including playing 120 games with eight NHL teams and, now, his second lap as a coach in the league.
Eakins, however, could be navigating a wholly different life in a wildly different place with taste buds more attuned to kumquats. But the Ducks coach, who never met his birth father, moved after his mother met a long-distance trucker from Canada.
So off they went to Peterborough, Ontario, a quaint landing spot about 80 miles northeast of Toronto. The gateway to "Cottage Country" boasts business giants Pepsi, Rolls-Royce and Siemens.
"When I look at my life, it's like I've had two," Eakins said after the team's Thursday skate at Great Park Ice & FivePoint Arena. "There was that part of my life, I had a southern accent and all of that. Good on my mom and dad for providing me and my sister a better life."
Two lives, two accents. A jolting, fulfilling second chapter.
Hockey has provided a home as comfy as a favorite sweater for Eakins, the 52-year-old who has guided the Ducks to a hot start.
The fast start was important for Eakins, whose initial NHL coaching job lasted just 18 months. The Edmonton Oilers limped to a 29-44-9 record in 2013-14 and Eakins was replaced when the team started the following season 7-19-5.
Eakins characterizes those games as lessons, rather than failures.
The first order of business with the Ducks, Eakins said, was to listen. He talked to owners, staff and players about what it felt like around the franchise during the six-season playoff run that ended last season. Instead of picking up the phone to talk to veterans, he hopped on airplanes to meet players and families in person _ from Pittsburgh to Sweden.
"That's Dallas. He's a communicator," said center Ryan Getzlaf, the Ducks captain who has played the most games in franchise history. "He has the ability to show he cares about you as a human and not just the game. One of the first phone calls I had with him, he already knew how many kids I had, what the family situation was like and he invited my family to meet him.
"It was like a breath of fresh air. There's more to hockey than just showing up to the rink every day."
Eakins' strategy to smudge his fingerprints on the Ducks? Listen.
Talk to him long enough and you realize he's an "us" guy, not a "me" guy. He's a "we" guy, not an "I" guy. That's not because it's the right thing to say. He's wired that way. It's natural. And consistent.
"I found it amusing that I've been asked the question no less than a dozen times, 'Hey, what have you done for this culture?' " Eakins said. "I've done nothing. I've just listened and taken good notes and gone off of what was given to me."
That included asking wives and girlfriends to sit in on his road trip to meet veterans. A different scouting report, of sorts.
"It's unbelievable how the spouses know what's up," he said. "It's great to sit with the two of them together. I needed information quickly. I was new. It's their team and it was important for this to become 'ours.' "
This represents more than a second chance for Eakins. It's another remarkable moment in a second life.
When Eakins was drafted into the NHL, he thanked his parents for the move to Canada in the family's kitchen. Though memories of Florida linger, he still marvels at how fate put skates on his feet.
"I used to love those Spam sandwiches, I remember that," Eakins said. "A lot of love, just not a lot of material things back then. It's an absolute privilege to come in here and call this work."
Rings true, in any accent.
