Something had to give

We almost weren’t surprised. We could feel something coming that afternoon, that week and really, this calendar year. Enough was enough for the Wild. It needed to make a change, pulling the parachute on another mid-season freefall.

Mike Yeo on Jan. 4, 2014. Another time we were on "Yeo Watch."

So, head coach Mike Yeo was given a pink slip, after going 173-132-44 in his fifth season with the Wild. That includes going 11-17 in the playoffs.

It was a family day for us Saturday. We visited my brother and ended up watching the Wild versus Boston game. It was more of the same, just another frustrating effort for the hometown boys. As it went on, we wondered how long this could keep up.

Rock bottom
It had to be rock bottom, right? Well, Ryan Suter referenced rock bottom after the loss Thursday night to the Washington Capitals. I thought they hit rock bottom last year in Buffalo before they acquired Devan Dubnyk. But just when you think it can’t get any worse for this hockey club, it gets worse.

Twitter was pretty lively Saturday. At one point, I fired off a Tweet saying: “I remember how exciting it was when Parise and Suter were signed to this club. What has happened?” #rhetorical

I just couldn’t understand the decline in that moment. I remember exactly where I was when I heard about that historic signing. It was supposed to propel the Wild toward a Stanley Cup, not another coaching change. The Wild were supposed to improve, not regress from playoff series to playoff series. Each time they faced the Chicago Blackhawks in the playoffs it should have gotten better (2013-15). Instead, the series became more one-sided in favor of the Blackhawks.

All that said, it really did seem that Saturday truly was rock bottom.

My initial reaction to the Yeo news
I was still a little surprised. As bad as things got for the Wild recently, it couldn’t warrant a coach firing mid-season, right? I mean, we’re talking about the same team that went in the tank each of the past three seasons (and it made the playoffs the past two and is still not out of the question this season). I just didn’t see the move happening during the season.

In the middle of the slump, I figured it might be alright to have the Wild finally miss the playoffs and then it could ring as a huge wake-up call for the organization. Shake things up and make changes.

That wasn’t to be. Yeo was fired after eight straight losses and a 3-12-4 record in 2016. Anyone remember the stat about how the Wild had its best calendar-year record in 2015? Yeah, I’m still rolling my eyes at that one.

As reactions flowed about Yeo’s firing, it was obvious that people wanted to point fingers at players or anywhere else besides Yeo. They may be right, they may be wrong. I think there were things he could have done better, for sure.

Something had to be done
Here’s the deal: Sports is a business.

I feel like that needs to be said, mostly because everyone is so emotionally invested in this team and what happens to it. I get that. But this goes out to the crowd that is frustrated because it was Yeo who ultimately got punished for the failures of the Wild players. The ones that say, “coaches can’t score! Coaches aren’t on the ice!”

True. But this is just something that goes with the territory. Is it always fair? Probably not. But that’s how sports are, as a business. Sometimes things get so bad there needs to be a change. That easy change is a new coach/manager or general manager.

It reminds me a little of Ron Gardenhire with the Minnesota Twins, who was fired after the 2014 season. He won a bunch of division titles with the Minnesota ballclub, but then had four, 90-plus loss seasons. So, he had to go. Do I think it was all his fault or he was the main reason the Twins all of a sudden started losing? No. But the Twins decided something had to change. That something was Gardy.

Maybe this all sounds cold-hearted to some, or it could sound not harsh enough to others who have called for Yeo’s head since last year, or before that point. It’s just the way it is. I don’t see it as this 100 percent failure on Yeo’s shoulders or marking him as a bad coach.

No quick fixes
Going along with this, I don’t think Yeo getting fired fixes everything. Far from it. Firing him now truly tells me how bad the situation is for the Wild. It’s so bad that the club fired its coach during the middle of the season.

But the players are still there. It’s hard to know what went on in that locker room with the players and Yeo. Speculation - and Twitter - can suggest a lot of things. Did the players quit on Yeo? Are they just not as good as we’ve been told? Is Yeo really a bad coach? Why are they so bad now when they’ve proven to be good in the past? Some are wanting to hold Chuck Fletcher accountable. I might get into that another time.

These are all tough questions. I’m actually expecting this team to continue to struggle. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if they turn it around for some wins either. The potential is there. But the attitude that I previously mentioned is still true: Players have to play. They need to start scoring, stop giving up prime scoring chances to the opposition, play as a team and get some wins.

We went to a Wild game a couple years ago, Jan. 4, 2014, against the Capitals. Suter scored a hat trick. It was during a tough stretch for the Wild. I took a close-up photo of the Wild bench and added this caption on Facebook: “Got some bench shots of Mike Yeo, since we thought his days were numbered as the head coach.”

He was still here two years – and two more slumps – later.

So, I think because Yeo has always been around for so long, for so many losses, these annual slumps, it was easy to believe that he would always be here. I don’t mean that in a taking-for-granted way. I just mean that the Wild couldn’t possibly fire him like this during the season, right? If it gets bad enough, they’ll wait until the season ends to dismiss him, I thought.

I guess not. Something just had to give.

This was originally posted at WildXtra.com.