Mike Yeo, the interim coach of the Philadelphia Flyers, will not be the team’s head coach next season, general manager Chuck Fletcher stated on Tuesday.
Yeo, 48, was 17-36-7 behind the Flyers’ bench this season, as Philadelphia missed the playoffs for the second time in a row. Yeo formerly worked as the head coach of the Minnesota Wild and the St. Louis Blues.
Yeo worked as an assistant coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins from 2006 to 2010, helping them win the Stanley Cup in 2009. He then became the coach of Houston in the American Hockey League in 2010. Yeo led the Wild’s AHL club, Houston, to the Calder Cup Final in 2010-11 before being elevated to coach the Wild while Fletcher was their general manager.
The Wild made the playoffs three times in Yeo’s five seasons, while the Blues made the playoffs once in his three.
Yeo was hired as an interim coach on December 6, 2021, after the Flyers sacked coach Alain Vigneault.
This came on the heels of a 7-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, which extended the team’s winless skid to eight games. Under Vigneault, who was in his third season in Philadelphia at the time, the Flyers finished 8-10-4.
Fletcher stated that he would prefer to keep Yeo with the Flyers in another capacity. saying his knowledge base is valuable to the team.
“Mike and I will continue to discuss that. But he’s free to speak to other teams,” Fletcher said.
“I met with Mike yesterday and I advised him he won’t be our head coach for next season,” Fletcher said Tuesday.
“We dealt Mike a really tough hand. He’s a good coach. I thought he did a really good job under the circumstances. He kept our players competing and playing hard to the end.”
Since the start of the 2013-14 season, Yeo was the Flyers’ sixth coach. Philadelphia started the season 8-10-4 before Vigneault was dismissed, and things didn’t get much better under Yeo.
The Flyers last made the playoffs in Vigneault’s debut season, in 2020.
According to Fletcher, the Flyers’ hockey operations staff will begin the search for a new head coach this week.
Fletcher stated that the Flyers are “conscious of the calendar,” but he would not commit to a timetable for hiring a head coach.
This season, the Flyers were one of the NHL’s most disappointing teams. Last offseason, Fletcher signed numerous seasoned players, including defender Ryan Ellis, who was limited to only four games due to injury.
This summer, the general manager has spoken of an “aggressive retool,” which will now involve a new head coach.
