Minnesota Wild: All-Time Head Coaches Ranked
By Cody Defoe
#1 – Jacques Lemaire (2000-2009) (293-255-108)
The very first coach of the Minnesota Wild was also the longest tenured and the winningest coach in franchise history. He gets first on our list not only for his lasting effect on the franchise, but for the teams he did it with.
In June 2000, the expansion Minnesota Wild named Jacques Lemaire to be the first ever Head Coach of the franchise shortly before choosing Marian Gaborik to be the future star player of the franchise in the 2000 NHL Entry Draft.
Lemaire brought with him a wealth of experience, including 8 Stanley Cup Championships as a player and 1 as the Head Coach of the New Jersey Devils. He also brought “trap hockey” to the state of Minnesota, which allowed his expansion franchise to be moderately successful early on.
It only took 3 seasons for Jacques, with help from then General Manager Doug Risebrough, to turn a franchise made up of expansion draft misfits into a true Stanley cup contender.
After getting 25 wins and missing the playoffs in each of the team’s first 2 seasons, Jacques managed to turn things around in a big way. A 42 win season led to the team’s first playoff berth. A 3 games to 1 deficit to the Colorado Avalanche in round one was overcome with a Game 7 victory.
Jacques’s Wild would then repeated the feat, by overcoming a 3 games to 1 deficit against the Vancouver Canucks with another Game 7 victory. Unfortunately, the magic ran out there and the Cinderella story was cut short with a series sweep (scoring only a single goal through 4 games) by the then Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
This still stands as the one and only time that the Minnesota Wild franchise has made it beyond the second round. By that statistic alone, Jacques takes a large head start over any and all of his coaching competition in the State of Hockey to this day. Not to mention that he was rewarded with the Jack Adams Trophy as the league’s best coach for the 2002-03 Season.
Following the Cinderella run, Lemaire’s team remained in the playoff hunt for the remainder of his time in Minnesota. After missing the playoff’s the following season, the NHL was forced to deal with the Lockout lost season of 2004-2005 and the repurcussions of the newly agreed upon CBA.
The Wild didn’t appear to stumble much, however, as they played the new season relatively average the whole way through. In the thick of the playoff hunt down the stretch, they ended up missing the playoffs but maintaining that they were middle-of-the-pack.
The 2006-07 Season saw Lemaire lead the team back to the playoffs, finishing with a then franchise best 48 wins and 104 points in the regular season, and a 1st round playoff rematch with the same Ducks who had swept them out of the Conference Finals 5 years before.
This series saw the Wild finally solve the Anaheim goaltenders, but was ultimately more of the same as Anaheim took the series in 5 games. It was encouraging to see that Lemaire was able to build on what happened in 2003, but disappointing to see a similar playoff exit.
Lemaire would bounce back from the early playoff exit by leading the Wild to its first Division championship, and home ice advantage in the first round for the first time ever. Home ice, sadly, wasn’t enough to give them the edge over Colorado, and the team was outed in 6 games.
Lemaire gets first place on this list for a number of reasons, but namely because nobody has managed to exceed his most important accomplishments. Reaching the Conference championships, winning coach of the year, winning a division championship, and getting the William M. Jennings Trophy awarded to his goaltenders for fewest goals allowed in the league (largely due to Lemaire’s defensive system).
Only once in Lemaire’s tenure did the team allow more than 220 goals in a season. After the first 2 seasons as an expansion franchise, the Lemaire led Wild never allowed more goals than they scored in a season.
Despite what the Vegas Golden Knights may lead anyone to believe, bringing an expansion franchise into a league of established teams and superstars is never an easy feat. Lemaire’s Minnesota Wild had a brief adjustment period to get their feet wet in the league, but once they found a rhythm they absolutely proved they belonged.
Next: Minnesota Wild: 2018-19 Preview of J.T. Brown
One day, hopefully soon, we’ll have a coach in Minnesota who gets to bring the Stanley Cup home to the Team of 18,000. Until then, we can live off the memories of what these past coaches were able to do, and dream about seeing Boudreau recreate his regular season success into 16 wins through the playoffs.