EDMONTON, ALBERTA - When Mike Yeo got the job as Wild coach this summer, he began dialing his NHL friends to do some digging on the neutral zone.
He had one question: Which team was the toughest to generate scoring chances against?
The common answer: the New Jersey Devils, and not the pre-New Year's Devils, but the post-New Year's Devils -- the version that nearly made a miraculous run to the playoffs after Jacques Lemaire arrived back on the scene.
Yes, the Jacques Lemaire Trap was back -- only a reinvented, more aggressive trap than Lemaire even used during his eight-year tenure in Minnesota.
In the irony of all ironies, it's Lemaire's latest version of the aggressive neutral-zone forecheck that Yeo will deploy as the Wild coach and the one he unveiled during his exhibition debut behind the Wild's bench Tuesday night against the Edmonton Oilers.
"Now when I say trap, you're not going to see a team where five guys are just backing up," Yeo said. "Like, look at our team last year in Houston. I mean, how many people would say we were a boring team to watch? We trapped in the neutral zone, but we were aggressive in how we did it."
And before you start freaking out, let's be clear: The Wild is not returning to the trap. The Wild never stopped trapping.
During Todd Richards' two seasons as coach, the Wild trapped. In fact, Yeo guesses 90 percent of the NHL traps in some way, whether it be the passive 1-2-2 Richards coached, the aggressive 1-2-2 Yeo will coach or even the Tampa Bay Lightning's much-publicized 1-3-1 during last season's playoffs.