The Philadelphia Flyers have relieved interim head coach Mike Yeo of his duties, according to Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher. The news was first reported by ESPN’s Kevin Weekes on Monday night. Fletcher did say that the organization would like to keep Yeo around in some capacity, however.
“I met with Mike yesterday and advised him he won’t be our head coach for next season.”, said Fletcher at his end-of-season press conference on Tuesday. Fletcher also quipped, “We dealt Mike a really tough hand. He’s a good coach. I thought he did a really good job under the circumstances.” Fletcher also stated, “He’s the type of person we’d love to keep in the organization.”
Yeo took over behind the Philadelphia bench as the interim head coach after Alain Vigneault was fired on December 6th, 2021 along with assistant coach Michel Therrien. Yeo had previously served as an assistant under Vigneault that mainly worked with the defensemen and penalty killers after being brought in by the Flyers in May of 2019.
In 60 games behind the Flyers’ bench this season, Yeo’s squad could only muster a 17-36-7 record, and the Flyers finished dead last in the Metropolitan Division, second to last in the Eastern Conference, and fourth to last in the entire league.
The 48 year-old North Bay, Ontario native had previously served as head coach of the Minnesota Wild and St. Louis Blues before coming to Philadelphia. He became Minnesota’s head coach in 2011 after a successful stint with the American Hockey League’s Houston Aeros, and he served with the Wild until 2016 after being fired 55 games into his fifth season with the club.
He landed with the Blues organization in 2016 as an assistant and the likely replacement of then-head coach Ken Hitchcock, and Yeo ended up prematurely serving as head coach of St. Louis for the final 32 games of the 2016-17 season up until the 19th game of the Blues’ season in 2018-19, where former Flyers player and coach Craig Berube took the reigns after that point.
The Flyers’ coaching search will open immediately and will be fluid. Fletcher said that there is no set timeframe to hire someone, and they will meet tomorrow within the hockey operations department to determine a profile of what they’re looking for in a head coach and begin to zero in on candidates. There are plenty of worthy candidates that could be in the mix, such as John Tortorella, Rick Tocchet, Claude Julien, Jim Montgomery, and Rikard Grönborg, among others.
