New Wild head coach John Hynes planning to ‘come in and make small tweaks’
John Hynes isn’t anticipating a ton of heavy lifting in his quest to get the Minnesota Wild back on track. While waiting for his next NHL coaching opportunity back In Nashville, he watched a lot of hockey, and he already has ideas about how to get his new team going.
“It’s really just pinpointing simple things,” he said. “You’re not going to come in midseason and make wholesale changes, but I think you want to work on identity, you want to work on the mindset of the team. But you come in and make small tweaks.”
Hynes was formally introduced as the seventh head coach in franchise history on Tuesday morning, hours before the team was set to play host to the St. Louis Blues at Xcel Energy Center.
“I’m certainly familiar with the team and the players and some of the things that I think we can tweak right away,” Hynes said. “But also (I want to) give the players the atmosphere, sufficient structure but to be able to play with their instincts and get their games back.”
General manager Bill Guerin fired fifth-year coach Dean Evason on Monday, less than 24 hours after a lackluster loss in Detroit dropped the Wild to 5-10-4, 14 points out of first place in the Central Division and seven points away from the eighth and final playoff spot in the NHL’s Western Conference.
Guerin, who built the team and this fall signed veterans Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman to contract extensions, said he’s not giving up on this season and believes Hynes — a veteran NHL coach he first met when Guerin was a player for the New Jersey Devils — will press the right buttons.
“I know these players really well. Their buy-in level is really high,” Guerin said of his team. “If they can make this team better, or be better, they’ll do it. Their buy-in is incredible, and I think they’ll listen to John right away. I think the buy-in will be right away.
“You just feel like a weight’s been off your shoulders. It’s tough because it comes with a tough message, a tough decision, but it’s a new chapter.”
Hynes, 48, has done this before, succeeding Peter Laviolette in Nashville midseason, a month after being fired himself in New Jersey, in January 2020 and leading the Predators to a 16-11-1 record before the season was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In parts of four seasons in Nashville, Hynes’ Predators were 134-96-18 before he was fired after last season. He has a multiyear deal with Minnesota, but Guerin declined to add details. “This is not a one-year thing,” he said.
The Wild entered Tuesday’s 7 p.m. puck drop with a seven-game losing streak, five regulation wins — better than only the San Jose Sharks’ four — and a league-high 29 first period goals-against. The penalty kill is the NHL’s worst, with a league-high 23 goals-against and league-low 66.7 percent success rate. Guerin also fired assistant coach Bob Woods, who was in charge of the Wild’s kill.
“It’s unfortunate,” Hynes said. “I’m a coach and I have a lot of respect for Dean and Bob, but I think when you come into these situations, the team is hurt in certain ways — whether that’s individual players’ confidence, whether it’s belief and execution of what you want to do.”
To take Woods’ place, Guerin promoted Pat Dwyer, a former NHL player who was hired this year to be an assistant to Brett McLean at AHL Iowa.
With the exception of Matt Dumba, the Wild returned all of the key pieces from a team that finished last season with 103 points, the fourth-best finish in franchise history. But the Wild started the season without captain Jared Spurgeon, injured in a preseason game, then lost players such as Matt Boldy, Alex Goligoski and Freddy Gaudreau to long-term injuries.
After winning two of its first three games, the team went into a spiral, and getting the injured players back hasn’t helped. Spurgeon, one of the best defensemen in the NHL, hasn’t been part of a win this season, and the Wild haven’t won a game since beating the Islanders, 4-2, in New York on Nov. 7.
“Obviously there’s a feeling of disappointment with the news. That’s on us as players in here,” Spurgeon said after Tuesday’s morning skate. “Unfortunately, something needed to change, and it was Dean and Woodsy.”
Said alternate captain Marcus Foligno: “Losses pile up, this is what happens. Unfortunately, there are coaches that have to fall on the knife for players like us. It’s not fair, but at the same time, it’s a wake-up call.”
Hynes said his first job is to get to know the Wild players, then build their confidence back up. Big offensive pieces Matt Boldy, Marcus Johansson and, to a lesser extent, Kirill Kaprizov have struggled to find their games early. Johansson is one of a handful of Wild players who has already worked with Hynes. He and Jon Merrill played for Hynes with the Devils, and Pat Maroon was a member of a World Championship team coached by Hynes.
“It’s on the fly, but I believe that when you come into this situation, everybody’s hurting,” the new coach said. “It’s a tough situation for the coaching staff, the training staff and particularly the players. So, I think it’s important to really come in and connect with those guys, connect with the coaches, get feedback — particularly from the players on some of those things that they’re seeing and feeling. That’s the start of it. It’s first who, then what.”
