Both the Minnesota Wild and New Jersey Devils have started slowly this season, leading to much speculation regarding their head coaching situations. In Minnesota, Bruce Boudreau was inherited, not hired, by new GM Bill Guerin and has his team off to a 1-4 record to start the year. John Hynes and the New Jersey Devils are off to an even worse 0-4-2 record even with all of the hype surrounding the team after big offseason changes. Despite the struggles, Pierre LeBrun and Bob McKenzie report that neither is in imminent danger of being fired on the latest edition of Insider Trading for TSN.
In fact, LeBrun notes that Guerin will be patient with the entire Wild organization, taking full stock of what he has before making any major changes. Minnesota made Kevin Fiala a healthy scratch tonight in Toronto, sending a message to the young forward that no job is secure at the moment.
The Wild made sweeping changes to their core under former GM Paul Fenton, trading away Nino Niederreiter, Mikael Granlund and Charlie Coyle while adding Mats Zuccarello to a lengthy free agent deal. None of those moves have really panned out as of yet, meaning Guerin still has lots of work to do in Minnesota.
The Devils are in a much different situation. The team has made the playoffs just once in the last seven years, missing it three times under Hynes since he was hired in 2015. An 0-4-2 start may have been acceptable in some of those other years as they worked through a rebuild, but after adding Jack Hughes, P.K. Subban, Wayne Simmonds and Nikita Gusev in one summer the team had big expectations.
Even if GM Ray Shero isn’t ready to make a change behind the bench right now, it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t happen at some point if the Devils continue to struggle. Hynes has just a 141-150-43 record as head coach of the team.
Hynes needs to go now. The team looks lost under him….
If Shero won’t fire Hynes then he needs to fired!
Yeah, even if the Wild need a ton of work to get competitive again, the last thing Fletcher wants Guerin to do is come in trading guys away like he works on commission.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Fletcher can’t STILL be pulling strings here with the Wild! I am guessing you meant Leipold, the team owner. I don’t think you will see a lot of movement in trades for the Wild this year. Fletcher left the team without any real draft picks or developed youth. Fenton just traded away the only real tradable assests without getting much in return. Donato sparkled some last season but has had trouble getting out of the gate this year. Fiala, so far, just doesn’t appear to be the player that some thought he would be. And Rask? That was Fenton just getting jobbed on that trade.