If the Minnesota Wild are going to make a deep postseason run this year, they’ll do so without former head coach Mike Yeo, who was relieved of his duties after an eighth-consecutive loss. Taking his place as interim head coach will be Iowa Wild coach John Torchetti, who returned to the organization last season as a midseason hire after the firing of Kurt Kleinendorst.
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For the first time since this six-week losing skid began – the Wild (23-21-10) have lost 12 of their past 13 games – the team is in even worse position than it was previous year after its hit bottom in mid-January.
“We won a big game in Dallas”, Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher said Sunday, meeting with the media after practice at a rink in suburban Minneapolis. “This year, I think we were playing well”.
When Fletcher gave Yeo a three-year contract extension after the 2013-14 season, he lauded his ability to develop several of the Wild’s young players.
“It’s nearly more hard to do what we’re doing right now than it is to win a whole bunch of games”, Yeo said. “Whether it’s changing players, changing [the] coach or not doing anything, you’re either going to get a response from the group and you’re going to change things, or you’re not and you’re not going to change things”, according to NHL.com. Minnesota LW Zach Parise leads the team with 17 goals but is mired in an eight-game drought and has scored just once in his last 13 contests.3.
But on a day when the B’s had to win ugly, they did just that, beating the struggling Minnesota Wild, 4-2, at Xcel Energy Center this afternoon.
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“I’m a realist”, Yeo said. The Wild have been eliminated by Chicago each of the last three seasons. He has nine seasons of National Hockey League coaching experience, including stints as interim coach with the Florida Panthers in 2004 and the Los Angeles Kings in 2006. “But I thought we played a pretty sound game tonight and we got the two points, which is huge, and now we can move on”. Torchetti has been the head coach of the Iowa Wild. The Wild went on to lose in overtime.
