Minnesota Wild hires Mike Yeo from the AHL as its new Head Coach –NHL Updates
Minnesota Wild, a struggling club of the National Hockey League (NHL) has started something new to rejuvenate and reenergise the team before the upcoming 2011-2012 season. Minnesota hired the American Hockey League’s Houston Aeros’ coach, Mike Yeo, as Wild’s
new head coach on Friday, June 17th.
Yeo, a 37-year-old, who was also an assistant coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ team that won the 2009 Stanley Cup, left the NHL after the finals and moved on to the AHL and became Houston Aeros’ coach.
He led Houston Aeros through a great season and reached the Calder Cup Finals but lost to Ottawa Senators farm league team, Binghamton Senators, in a seven-game series.
Houston Aeros is an AHL team which is associated with the NHL through Minnesota Wild.
"The longer I watched Houston play - their attention to detail and the way they played night in and night out and knowing what I was looking for in a coach - it just became more apparent the longer the process went that Mike was the guy", Minnesota Wild’s
general manager, Chuck Fletcher, said.
Yeo has never played in the NHL which is why some people might disagree with Fletcher choosing him as Minnesota’s head coach but he certainly has the talent.
Most young boys want to become players when they grow-up, but not Yeo. He has wanted to become a coach in the NHL ever since he was young and it happened for him earlier and now again.
"More than anything, you start to form ideas and beliefs and philosophies", Yeo said. "I always felt that I was going to be a coach. I knew that was a passion that I had inside of me".
He also added that it was in his younger years when he began to observe coaches of various teams and how they would plan out plays and execute them. It was his passion to make players understand what he wanted and show them how to do it.
Todd Richards, Wild’s coach for two seasons was replaced with Yeo because of his inability to take Minnesota to the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
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