Mike Yeo vs. Wild is a juicy subplot, but St. Louis coach focuses on team's goal

Mike Yeo's over it.

The Wild's former coach has faced his old team five teams already — three times in Minnesota, and once since taking over as the St. Louis Blues' head coach.

So he swears he's no longer sentimental and certainly not sheepish about stepping foot inside Xcel Energy Center.

His family, that's a different story.

He doesn't think his wife, Tanya, and high school senior son, Kyler, will attend the high-stress playoff games in St. Paul when the Wild and Blues face off starting Wednesday night. His daughter, Braeden, a college sophomore in Colorado, plans to attend some of the games, but in St. Louis.

"They're nervous, they're excited. But it's different. We have a lot of friends that are texting and cheering for us, or at least they're saying they're cheering for us," Yeo said, laughing about the thought that just maybe his Wild-fan friends are fibbing. "It's a unique situation, for sure, when your family's living in the town of the team you're playing against.

"But for me, when you get wrapped up in the battle, and as I'm preparing, the only thing I'm thinking about is they're our competition. We've had all the games to get over all the other stuff, and now it's the playoffs. Their goal is the same as our goal."

In a scrumptious subplot of the Wild-Blues series, the Wild is going up against its former coach. On Monday, Yeo dived into the video of his old team.

"We struggled to find weaknesses today," said Yeo, adding that he's not just tossing bouquets at his playoff opponent the way many coaches do this time of year. For instance, Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said Monday Yeo's Blues remind him of the 2011 Boston Bruins that won the Stanley Cup.

"It's not a fluke that they were the second-best offensive team in the league and are one of the best defensive teams," Yeo said of the Wild. "It's a team that two years ago beat our team [in the playoffs], and now they're a better team adding [Eric Staal], adding [Martin] Hanzal and with the evolution and growth of their young players. We know what we're up against."

Of course, the Wild has a tough task, too. Since Yeo assumed head-coaching duties from Ken Hitchcock on Feb. 1, the Blues are the best defensive team in the NHL with the best goaltending.

Yeo has a lot of affection for many of his old players, and it's clear talking to such players as Devan Dubnyk, Jared Spurgeon, Charlie Coyle and Nino Niederreiter on Monday, the feeling is mutual.

"They did great things for me when they were here, and I learned a lot from them," Spurgeon said. "It'll be different seeing them on the other side."

"I'm happy for him. He's a good coach, and he deserves to be behind the bench somewhere," Niederreiter added.

Boudreau is not getting caught up in the Yeo story line.

"The bigger story line would be if went and played Anaheim," Boudreau said, laughing.

Boudreau said if there are trade secrets Yeo has on Wild players, "we've got coaches on our staff that know how he coaches, too. But our players will not be a surprise to Mike Yeo. For instance, if we played an Eastern team that we see twice a year, Jared Spurgeon might be a little surprise.

"Mike Yeo's going to know what exactly he brings. He's going to have an advantage in knowing the player personnel, but we're a little different this year. I think we're a lot higher-scoring team than they've had in the past."

Zach Parise said with video in today's NHL, "there's no secrets anymore. There's really not. We play them so much, we know everything about every player on their team, they know everything about every player on our team. It's not like he's going to have some secret weaknesses to us. It just doesn't happen."

Conversely, Parise wonders if Yeo has tweaked the way he's coached.

"In the game here [March 7], they played a lot more passive than when he coached us," Parise said. "They had five guys behind the red line the whole game. I don't know if he always does that, but I don't think we did that when he coached here."

Parise said the motivation is to beat the Blues, not "necessarily beat him."

In putting together the Blues' game plan, Yeo said he's not going to try to run the Wild out of the building like the Blues attempted when he coached the Wild in 2015. Truthfully, he thinks that was a mistake by them.

"I know that they don't get pushed out of games. I know the character of that team. That's not going to happen," Yeo said. "But we didn't make the playoffs to hopefully win a couple games.

"We're playing a team that for most of the year was probably the best team in the league. What we have to do is prove to ourselves that we're good enough to beat those guys. We think that we are. It's one thing to think it, it's another to get out and do it. It's up to us to put it into action."