Angry Mike Yeo: "We're tired of being on the cusp;" Zach Parise concurs

It happened much later in the year, but last season when the Wild arrived in Arizona after getting waxed in St. Louis for a ninth loss in 12 games (3-5-4), the leaders took charge.

The Wild had a CBA-mandated day off in Glendale. Captain Mikko Koivu and assistants Zach Parise and Ryan Suter wanted to practice and met with the coaches at planeside. They were told the team wasn't allowed to do that.

So instead of wasting the fun day playing golf or lounging by the pool, Koivu, Parise and Suter met for breakfast (Ilya Bryzgalov actually joined), talked about the state of the team, each grabbed different individuals for one-on-one's and then held a players-only meeting the night before playing the Coyotes at the team hotel.

The Wild rallied in the third the next night to beat the Coyotes en route to a 6-0-1 mark in seven games to clinch a playoff spot. That meeting was credited with largely saving the season and rallying the team together.

To refresh your memory of the meeting, see here.

The Wild's back in Glendale for the first time since. It's 2-2-1 in its past five after last night's 2-1 loss at San Jose and 4-4-1 in its past nine. It is stuck in 10^th place in the West, five points behind sixth, seventh and eighth-place Calgary, Winnipeg and San Jose. The Wild has played three fewer games than Calgary and Winnipeg, four fewer than San Jose, BUT this was a team that was supposed to take the next step this season and join the top tier in the West.

At least, that was the expectation.

Yeo was fired up. The message? It's time for the Wild to get its act together, to wake up, to help each other, push and prod each other, challenge each other if that's what it takes. It's time for the Wild to stop underachieving and become the team everybody thinks it's capable of being.

Yeo started practice early because he didn't want the media to be in the rink when he did this. I just happened to walk to the arena early because after my 3:45 a.m. wakeup call, if I had hung out in my hotel room, I would have passed out.

So myself and few others heard everything, which Yeo didn't intend and wasn't exactly thrilled about. He sarcastically called it a "pep talk" afterward.

The gist of what Yeo was trying to convey to his team? Basically what I wrote last weekend here:

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

He continued later, "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."

Parise, who met with Yeo in the hotel courtyard for awhile before practice, said Yeo's lambasting to the struggling team was "probably long overdue."

"We can't keep going on playing the way we have been lately," Parise continued. "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."

It does seem like this team's MO is to not play better until its back is against that proverbial wall, which is frustrating for every one of you fans watching and everybody internally on the team.

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."

"I don't know if I could sit here and pinpoint one or two things," Parise said. "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' just no excitement to our game. It's been flat, you know? It's just been flat. 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."

Reminded of last year's players' meeting and how it seemed to jumpstart the languishing team, Parise said he hoped Yeo's urging today will do the same.

"I don't think anyone can argue with the fact of how we've been playing and how it just hasn't been acceptable," Parise said. "We expect a lot more out of ourselves. But as individuals we all have to be better. You can't sit around and hope someone else will do it and each guy has to do his job better and help out the next guy. That's how you get through this."

The top two lines of Parise-Mikael Granlund-Thomas Vanek and Jason Zucker-Koivu-Jason Pominville were the same today. The third and fourth lines were tinkered with Nino Niederreiter-Charlie Coyle-Justin Fontaine and Ryan Carter-Erik Haula-Kyle Brodziak.

I had a long talk with Coyle today and will probably hold all that for my game notebook Saturday for Sunday. When Parise mentioned no excitement in the game, I thought of Coyle. He has no goals since Oct. 23, is playing with little confidence and it's showing. He's just moseying around right now and is bigtime down on himself.

Yeo said part of putting him on that one unit is to simplify things and create a get the puck to the net mentality, which is how the Wild scored most its goals against the Islanders. Crashing the net, etc.

Frankly, I think it's well beyond time for Niederreiter on the No. 1 unit. But Yeo clearly is trying to jolt Coyle into some sort of life here.

"We need Charlie right now," Yeo said. "He's not unlike a lot of players and our entire group. If things haven't gone well, that's fine. Well what are we going to do? Are we going to push through it and find a way and demand that things turn around or are we just going to keep on looking in the rearview mirror?"

Yeo said Coyle's lack of points for six weeks is a function of everything and a "contributing factor as to why other parts of his game are suffering."

Yeo wouldn't divulge if he's coming back with Darcy Kuemper on Saturday or if Niklas Backstrom, who is usually outstanding at Arizona (8-5-0 with a 2.09 GAA, .939 SV% and one shutout in 13 career starts), will start.

The Coyotes have lost eight in a row at home and seven of eight overall.

Yeo said it would be a huge mistake for the Wild to look at Arizona as a reeling team and said the Wild should expect the Coyotes' best, especially after getting smoked to Nashville on Thursday.