The bad - still believes his system will work in the NHL
Reading all of the below, this is a horrible hire for the Blues. Yeo believes he doesn't need to change which means continued over-reliance on veterans in spite of the talent on the Blues being on the younger end of the equation. Fabbri is going to be screwed under this coach. Hell, Armstrong needs to get rid of everyone over 26 and force Yeo to actually coach.
The Blues have basically re-hired a younger version of Hithcock, one that doesn't believe he needs to change, even though Hitchcock after a ridiculous number of years coaching realized he had to change and free up the team offensively.
Hope I am wrong, but do not expect to be.
Stuff from two articles - a Q&A and another on the likely reasons he was fired.
Star Tribune Mike Yeo Q & A
Alec Schmidt of SB Nation on Why Yeo Was FiredIn the last week, some guys have said that they don’t have to play as defensively. Is that an unfair criticism, or a convenient one, or is your system too defensive? “That’s up to everybody. For me personally, I will not change. We spent more time working on offense, talking about offense in my time here. Before the trade rumors and before things started to go south, we were I think eighth in the league in offense. And we’re doing that without guys that get 100 points a year. We were doing that collectively through our lineup, so that to me tells me that the game that we were playing can produce offense. I look last year, I think we were fifth in the league in 5-on-5 offense, so I don’t buy that one bit. And not to mention, I’ve said this right from the start and I’ve said this to the players and I’ve said this to the fans, my goal was not to be a good regular-season team. My goal was to win the Stanley Cup. And you look at the Stanley Cup last year and you think of those two offensive powerhouses – Chicago and Tampa Bay – and it’s the Finals every game for the most part of a 2-1 game or a 1-0 game. So I wouldn’t change a single thing about that.”
How would you describe your system? Players now say they have more freedom, a green light to go? Did they under you, too? “Oh God, yeah. But I would say as things started to get worse, when we were giving up goals against, what were we going to say? Stop turning the puck over and bear down defensively? Year after year since I’ve been here, we’ve been one of the top defensive teams in the league in terms of shots against, quality of shots against and we give ourselves a chance to win every single night. So, it’ll take me some time to reevaluate, to figure it out. I mean, if they go out and score five goals a night for every game the rest of the year, then I was wrong. But the way that I saw it, I felt that the way we were built, we didn’t have guys who traditionally or historically have gotten 100 points a year. I didn’t feel that we were built that way. I knew that we could create offense. We had produced, but I knew that our bread and butter had to be defense, or at least that was my opinion.”
Did Parise’s frustrated attitude disappoint you? “I’ve had a couple really good conversations with Zach. What we’re talking about right now is what we also love about him. He is a fierce competitor. I truly believe that with a lot of us, a lot of our greatest strengths also come out as our greatest weaknesses. You could say that I’m maybe too loyal, but that’s also one of my greatest strengths. You could also point to a guy like Zach and the passion he has and the work ethic and the pride he plays with. It can surface the other way too. It’s been a frustrating time and I’m way past any kind of disappointment or frustration toward anybody. I’m ready to move on.”
How do you look at the annual midseason slumps? “I don’t know. I’ve looked at it a couple different ways and seen a couple different things. I think that I’ve seen fatigue play a part in it. You ask me to describe our system – our system is aggressive. People can say we’re defensive, but I don’t want to be a team backing up. I’m an aggressive, attacking, in your face hard working team. If we lose a little bit of that playing an aggressive game, the worst thing you can do is be in between. And it felt like some times we were a little in between. I look at it – we for the most part since my time here, one thing I’ve seen is if we’re going to win, we have to be on it. It doesn’t take much for you to be off it. I felt there are some teams that maybe can be off it for a little bit, but can go score five or six goals a night. We didn’t seem to be one of those teams.”
What is going forward? Is the goal to find a head coaching stuff? “Without question. There’s not a doubt in my mind that I’m a head coach in the National Hockey League. There’s not one. I will say when this first happened, it buckled me. I’ve been in this game 20-some odd years and I’d never been traded or fired. To have those kind of feelings all the sudden, it hit me hard. I was in Colorado this week visiting my daughter and I woke up one morning and all the sudden I was back. I am so motivated right now it’s not even funny.
"Maybe one thing I regret is I’m not a self promoter. I’m not a guy who is going to talk about the things I did to help us win. When we win, I’m going to talk about the players and what they did. I believe that’s the correct way to go about things. I think when they win, you want them feeling good about it, you want their confidence. I never wanted to make it about me, but I know that I’ve done a lot of really good things here. Even this year I was the third youngest coach in the league, but look at the experience I have. Somebody who is looking for a head coach, if they want experience, I’ve got it. If they want somebody who is young and hungry, I’ve got it. I guess more than anything else, I’ve got the fire. And I’m a winner. Everywhere I’ve gone at every level. As a player, assistant coach, head coach, I’ve won. This is the only place that I’ve been where I haven’t gone to the finals or won a championship. And I think I just ran out of time for that.”
Over-reliance on Aging Veterans
For most Wild fans, I would wager that this would be the number one complaint regarding Yeo's coaching tenure. Whether it was the ineffective power play, last minute pushes for tying goals, or overtime, under Yeo the most vital minutes were always reserved for the likes of Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu, Jason Pominville, Thomas Vanek and Ryan Suter. The young talents like Jason Zucker, Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle, Jared Spurgeon,Matt Dumba, consistently found themselves on the outside looking in. Over the past couple of years, Yeo did not adapt to the decline of his veterans and seemed completely unwilling to trust "the kids" in expanded roles. Zucker, a natural goal-scorer and the fastest player on the team was rarely used in 3-on-3 overtime, yet Yeo found time to deploy Jarret Stoll. Also, Zucker is 11th in the entire league in Goals/60 at 5v5 since the lockout, yet seemed unable to go more than five games without a goal before finding himself on the fourth line. Meanwhile, Pominville, who has had a career-worst start to this season, saw top six minutes up until the final game of Yeo's tenure, when he was demoted to the fourth line... for one period.
Awful Power Play
Yeo's reliance on his vets was not isolated to even strength play. Over the past two years, Yeo refused to make significant changes to a stagnant 26th ranked power play. It would seemingly take 10 game goalless stretches on the power play before Yeo even considered moving one of his veterans off of the power play. And if a minor tweak like *gasp*, putting one of the younger guys on the first unit didn't provide results in the first game, Yeo went back to pounding those veteran square pegs into the round hole of the power play.
Most telling of an inability to craft a successful power play perhaps, was that Dumba, who is easily the most dynamic offensive player on the team did not see significant power play time up until a couple of weeks ago. Dumba had more shots on the power play in a single game against Tampa Bay on January 2nd than Pominville has had on the power play in the past 26 games. Incredible, considering they play the same position on the power play.
Inability to Foster Offensive Talent
In 2012, Corey Pronman, a well respected source on all things prospects, had the Wild 4th overall in his rankings of organizational prospect talent. Most notable of those prospects was Mikael Granlund, who Pronman had ranked #1 in the world. When Granlund got off to a slow start in Minnesota, Yeo's response was to stick the diminutive center on the 4th line where he was supposed to learn to play "the right way". Granlund was also alternated from center to the wing multiple times. We'll never know if under different direction, Granlund could have developed into the star he was touted to be, but it is abundantly clear that Yeo added little to no value to Granlund's career.
Yeo's response to any short stretch of below average games from his talented youngsters -be it Nino, Zucker, or Coyle- was to heavily reduce their ice time by putting them on the fourth line, or just to scratch them, instead of providing avenues to get out of their scoring slumps. Yeo showed little faith in his youngsters by reducing their role and it is no wonder fans repeatedly wondered why their players played with such fleeting confidence.
Yeo's offensive woes were not limited to the youngsters either. Vanek and Pominville came to this team as proven goal-scorers. Yes, they arrived after their peak offensive years, but these guys were in their late twenties, very early 30's when they got here. For players that never relied on foot-speed to create offense, any immediate regression should have been minimal. Yeo was determined to develop Vanek's defensive game instead of supporting his desperately needed, though at times frustrating, creativity with the puck.
The arguments that Yeo wasn't given enough talent to succeed are myopic and short-sighted. Yeo came to a team bubbling with young talent and the lack of development of said talent should fall directly at his feet. Of course there are a few contracts Chuck Fletcher would like to take back, but that does not excuse the lack of any kind of breakout from the young forwards. No team in the league is going to win without significant contributions from young players and it is up to the coach to ensure those young players have the best opportunity to succeed.
