StaTuesday: Boudreau brings winning resume to Wild
With his team's chances at a playoff berth fizzling out, Minnesota Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher made the call in mid-February, firing head coach Mike Yeo and installing former AHL boss John Torchetti for the home stretch.
It's the second time Fletcher has attempted to galvanize an ailing roster by firing the head coach. Todd Richards was dismissed in similar fashion back in 2011.
Now Fletcher is looking to make sure it doesn't come to that again.
The Wild announced the hiring of former Anaheim Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau on Saturday, bringing a quick end to a courtship that lasted just seven days.
It's a break with traditional for Fletcher, whose last two full-time coaching hires saw him elevate first-time head coaches in Richards and Yeo.
This time he's bringing in one of the league's top candidates, who happens to have a lot of NHL experience -- and winning experience at that.
Boudreau has never had a losing season in the NHL, while his .659 winning percentage is tops amongst active NHL coaches.
He's been unemployed for all of 10 days in the last decade, and recently became the fastest coach in league history to reach 400 wins.
"There's not a situation that can come up that I haven't already faced," Boudreau said during his introductory press conference.
And while Boudreau's resume doesn't quite match NHL greats like Mike Babcock or Joel Quenneville, his regular-season results speak for themselves.
Boudreau's teams have consistently been division champions, even if his postseason runs have been marred by inconsistency, while his run to a Pacific Division title with the Ducks last season following a 1-7-2 start was one of the more impressive of his relatively young coaching career.
BRUCE BOUDREAU PLAYOFF HISTORY
Boudreau has made it to the conference finals just once, a fact that eventually prompted the Ducks to pull the plug on an otherwise successful run in Anaheim.
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