Wilderness Walk: Why The Wild Hired John Hynes

In case you live under a rock but care about the Minnesota Wild, the team fired head coach Dean Evason and assistant Bob Woods on Monday. And in their place, they have hired a brand new head coach, John Hynes.

Hynes is a familiar enough name around the NHL. He started his big-league career in charge of the New Jersey Devils' bench and then moved on to the Nashville Predators, where he was most recently. But the funny thing is, with those two teams, he has never won a playoff series in the three chances he has had.

Maybe it's the roster though, and that's entirely likely. During his tenure in New Jersey, from 2015 to 2020, the team was not the Devils we know today. No Jack Hughes for the majority of it, and still holding on to the weird and bad team in the past with players like Travis Zajac. He did have a couple of stars, like Taylor Hall for that very brief period of time, but they were not supposed to be contenders whatsoever.

In Nashville, it is a little bit harder to parse. He had some success stories, like Roman Josi dominating while he was there and seeing some progression out of young players, but also made frustration decisions for the fan base like leaving skilled young players to rot in the bottom six.

While the reason Wild general manager Bill Guerin hired Hynes is less clear in his NHL work, it becomes obvious the farther back you go. Of course, Hynes was the Wilkes-Barre Penguins head coach when Guerin was the assistant general manager in Pittsburgh. They have already had this dynamic of GM to coach, but just in the AHL.

This is Guerin's guy and he saw an opportunity.

Fortunately, they did actually have some success together. The AHL Penguins team went 189-126-27 when Hynes was in charge and they never went a season without winning at least one playoff round. He never won the Calder Cup, but that team was consistently one of the best AHL teams during that five-year stretch.

We can just focus on that if we want to stay positive.

That's Wild

• Dean Evason's firing was about more than just the coach. It was a point to make for something larger. [Hockey Wilderness]
• John Hynes isn't the solution to what truly ails the Wild. [The Athletic]
• Is the season over? With the playoffs so far ahead of them, should the Wild focus solely on the future instead? [StarTribune]

Off the trail...

• Why the notion that teams who finish in a playoff spot at Thanksgiving are likely to stay there, might not be true this season. [ESPN]
• The Florida Panthers-Ottawa Senators game appeared to be a hoot. The Tkachuk brothers really got at it and sparked a wild brawl that saw everyone on the ice get kicked out. [Yahoo Sports]