There is a school of thought that suggests a team that fires a head coach in the middle of a season gets at least a temporary boost when a new coach takes over.
Jon Bois at SB Nation was curious about this conventional wisdom a few years ago and compiled data from 12 seasons of midyear firings. He found that there isn't typically much of a bump, though across the board in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL the new coach does have more success than the previous coach.
What's particularly interesting is that he finds the NHL had the most "successful" firings of the leagues, with 15 of the 52 teams who fired coaches going on to make the postseason that year. The NHL teams had a winning percentage of .462 before the firings and .507 after.
What does that mean for the Wild and new coach John Torchetti? Well, it's too soon to tell for sure — though a 5-2 victory Monday in his debut at Vancouver was encouraging.
The Wild still has a better than 40 percent chance of making the playoffs, per Hockey Reference. That's up from just below 30 percent a couple days ago. So it happens a lot in the NHL and the Wild is still very much in the mix. Maybe it can happen here?
We can also look for evidence of a firing "bump" by looking at other local coaches who have been fired mid-year and how their successors fared. While "Torch" is the first mid-year Wild replacement, it's happened plenty with other teams. Here are some notable examples:
VIKINGS
Mike Tice: Replaced Dennis Green in 2001 with just one game left in the regular season and lost 19-3 at Baltimore with Spergon Wynn as his starting quarterback. Verdict: Green was fired too late in a lost season for Tice to have an impact that year.
