Is John Torchetti the next coach of the Minnesota Wild?

Mike Yeo took a long time before meeting the media following the Wild’s 4-2 loss to the Boston Bruins Saturday afternoon.

The 42-year-old Yeo was 173-132-44 in five seasons with the Wild.

For the first time since this six-week losing skid began – the Wild (23-21-10) have lost 12 of their past 13 games – the team is in even worse position than it was previous year after its hit bottom in mid-January.

That would prove a moot point however, as this season the Wild are struggling, suffering their eighth straight loss Saturday, and 13th loss out of 14 games. There was no word on whether there would be further dismissals from the Wild staff. Torchetti comes over from the Iowa Wild, where he’d served as head coach since November 2014. Last season they went 7-12-5 from late November through mid-January before acquiring Devan Dubnyk and going on a 28-9-3 run to make the postseason.

“If this wasn’t really maddening and really frustrating, it would nearly be comical the way things are going right now”, coach Mike Yeo said. He thanked Yeo for stabilizing a franchise that had missed the playoffs four years in a row before adding stars Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in 2012. Pair that with the fact that the Wild have been a consistently average puck possession team over the years and the general story becomes much clearer: much like the sword, head coaches live and die by the strength of their goaltending. “They’re your leaders and that’s why on your team moving forward, to get better, you have to have your leaders echo your words in the room when you leave the locker room”. Vanek hadn’t scored in 10 games, but with Gustavsson moving the wrong way, Vanek tried to tuck it short side. “We work so hard to finally get one and get this crowd into it and we take the crowd out of it pretty quickly again”.

Torchetti addressed the team before practice and said his goal is to meet with each player individually before Monday, the first of a three-game road trip to Western Canada.

“I’m a realist”, Yeo said before he was sacked.