@@Minnesota Wild

Do the Wild need a better head coach?

  • September 5, 2024


NHL.com released their "super 16" for head coaches, and Hynes tied for 21st based on analyst opinions (3 out of 15 gave him votes).

These are obviously just opinions, but I would have to agree that Hynes is not in the top half of coaches in the league at the moment. He can certainly get another crack at it this year, but if things go poorly, what would you do next summer?

21 comments

  2. IMO Hynes is not a great coach and Billy should be faulted for hiring his buddy over the best coach available.

    Would love to see a new coach but I’ve got a feeling he’s got at least this year and the start of next year before any coaching change happens

  3. They need better everything. But as far as coaches go, I’m not impressed with Hynes and wish BG hadn’t gone the old boys club route so readily.

  4. Is he a great head coach? He has yet to prove that. Personally what I like about Hynes, is if you look into his story you will see the man works HARD to understand his shortcomings and to learn from them. He isn’t a guy who is just stuck in his own ways and keeps his head buried in the sand when it doesn’t work out. My feelings are he has been legitimately grinding all offseason to figure out how to make this team better and how to coach better and I think that’s really positive. We will see if he can put it all together this season!

  7. Hynes has a pretty mediocre track record, but I want to see what he can do with a full year and a relatively healthy roster. I’ll reserve personal judgement until then

  8. I’m curious what people can cite as to why Hynes is a bad coach for us after the limited time we saw him behind the bench so far. Nothing egregious sticks out to me, I think he did a pretty good job steering a sinking ship last year. He got us back on track very quickly. We just had too large of a deficit to overcome in the time we had left. Give him a full season and I think we would have made the playoffs no problem.

  9. The dude has coached 3/4’s of a single season for the Wild and literally managed to turn a 5-15 start into a meaningful season where we almost made the playoffs. How can anyone say anything negative about what he’s done in Minnesota so far? It blows my mind.

    Maybe.. just maybe, give him one full season where he also has a chance to run his system..

  10. Too early to tell….

    Took over a struggling team missing a couple key players for big chunks of the season, goaltending was below-average, and made a decent run before the car ran out of gas.

    I still think it was a “friend of the GM” hire and I don’t think he’ll be a coach that’s here 5+ years.

    *I’ll give him this year and see what happens next year with the buy outs off the books but the leash will be short in 2025-26.

    (*Like my opinion matters anyways….)

  11. First off, NHL.com lists are hot trash click bait. Second, would a better coach make this team better to any measurable degree? I’d argue even the likes if Cooper or PoMo couldn’t take this team to the second round this year.

  12. So far I find Bill Guerins biggest weakness is his ability to hire a quality coaching staff. I remember debating whether or not Dean Evason and his guys would be decent when the special teams was below average, and I get the same feeling with John Hynes. I just do not like the track record he has at all.

  13. This is a throwaway cap-hell year and he is a sacrificial lamb. Maybe in the last 3rd of the season BG can bring in an upgrade.

  14. Hynes situation coming into this year reminds me so much of Rick Tocchet last year. Hoping that he has a similar year and coaches this team to a playoff series win and maybe wins the Jack Adams .

  15. How many guys have the balls to pull a goalie in OT? Gotta give him a chance to see what he can do with his system in place.

  16. I think the better question is why do you agree? What about him last year makes you agree with the analysts in this article? 

    Unless you watched him regularly with the preds or devils, I don’t really know how you can have much of an opinion on him. 

  17. To be honest, I would need to see him for two years coaching us. I thought he actually did a good job considering our record when Dean left

  21. Don’t like him. Why they ever hired him is beyond me. I can’t watch them play. Can’t wait till the day he is fired

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