Yeo vents to Wild about his frustration with its play

GLENDALE, ARIZ. – Mike Yeo's angry voice echoed in the concourse of Gila River Arena and throughout the lower bowl. The Wild coach, who typically maintains a reserved public persona even though he's fiery and competitive behind the scenes, was as animated as ever.

The Wild has been, as Zach Parise put it Friday, "very mediocre for a long time." Tired of the Wild treading water in the Western Conference despite increased expectations, Yeo lit into the team as players gathered around in a semicircle between the penalty boxes.

Yeo let rip a hot-blooded soliloquy sprinkled with expletives just to make his point crystal clear: It is well beyond the time for the 10th-place, 15-11-1 Wild to wake up, get its act together and become the team it believes it should be.

The coach, who does his best to never throw players or his team publicly under the proverbial bus, didn't intend his rant to be heard by reporters. In fact, the coach started practice a half-hour earlier than scheduled, likely so he could address his team, 4-4-1 in its past nine heading into Saturday's game against reeling Arizona, in private.

Informed every word was heard, Yeo facetiously called it a "pep talk."

"We're tired of being on the cusp, we're tired of being close," Yeo said after practice. "And we need to demand better than what we've been bringing. We're better than what we've been showing consistently. We can look at last game (a 2-1 loss at San Jose) and we can say we were close and we could have won the game, but we can't accept saying that.

"It would be a mistake to not think that our backs aren't against the wall a little bit here. We're behind. We're not at the level and we're not where we want to be right now. If that's the motivation we need, that's fine. Let's use it. We should not be accepting of where we're at right now and we need to demand more."

"We can't keep going on playing the way we have been lately," Parise said. "We're going to find ourselves on the outside looking in for the rest of the year if we keep it up, so at some point we have to collectively find ways to play better, to be a better team. We've been very mediocre for a long time."

The Wild is five points behind sixth-, seventh- and eighth-place Calgary, Winnipeg and San Jose. Yes, Minnesota has played four fewer games than Calgary and San Jose and three fewer than Winnipeg, but Parise said, "You don't want to put yourself in that situation where you're forced to string together eight wins just to have a sniff. Regardless of the games in hand, we're still five points back from Winnipeg. That's not good enough. We should be better. We're underachieving. It had to be addressed. Like I said, it was long overdue."

Asked what's wrong with the team, Parise said, "I don't know if I could sit here and pinpoint one or two things. I don't know if it would be healthy for anyone to sit here and try to analyze and pinpoint and tell you guys what we think is wrong. I don't think that's healthy for anyone. But as individuals, we all have to be better. We're not playing with any excitement right now. That's really been hurting us. There's just no excitement to our game. It's been flat, you know?

"So we've got to find a way to address that and start feeling good about how we're playing. We win one, we lose one. We haven't really had a chance to string anything together and feel good about the way we're playing."

Last season, the Wild coincidentally also arrived in Arizona in the wee hours of March 28 after a 5-1 loss at St. Louis, the Wild's ninth loss in 12 games (3-5-4). The Wild was blowing its chances for a playoff spot. Wanting to make something productive out of a league-mandated day off, captain Mikko Koivu, Parise and Ryan Suter met over breakfast, held individual one-on-ones with teammates and then a players-only meeting.