Things couldn't be going better for the Minnesota Wild right now. They're tied for the second-highest point total in the league and are dead even with the Dallas Stars for the second-best record in the Western Conference.
A lot of that has to do with the blockbuster trade the team made for Quinn Hughes, but John Hynes deserves a ton of credit for weathering some choppy waters earlier in the season. The same can't be said for his predecessor, Dean Evason, who will be looking for his third team in four seasons.
Evason was fired by the Columbus Blue Jackets after limping out to a 19-19-7 start this season. It's a bit of a surprise given it was just his second season as head coach, but Blue Jackets fans are quickly learning a lesson Wild fans know all about.
Dean Evason just got fired (again) under similar circumstances to how his time with the Wild ended
It's pretty clear that the Blue Jackets were underperforming, but it's also hard to determine how much of that falls on the clipboard of Evason. Columbus overperformed last season, going from a team with low expectations to nearly earning a Wild Card; the Blue Jackets finished two points behind Montreal who snuck in as the final team in the Eastern Conference bracket.
If anything, it seemed Evason had proven he was exactly the coach the Jackets needed to start turning things around. It wasn't dissimilar to how he took over for Bruce Boudreau after he was fired 57 games into the 2020 season and took the Wild to the playoffs.
Just like that situation, though, it seems Evason was a victim of his own success. While he was able to coach Minnesota out of its funk and into a playoff spot that season, the Wild suffered first-round exits in each of the next three trips they took.
The circumstances and timeline are a bit different in Columbus, but the vibes are still the same. The Blue Jackets were a below average team that Evason nearly coached into a playoff spot, but look every bit like what a team with below average roster talent.
His exit from Minnesota felt very similar, as the luck that had helped bail the Wild out of certain situations during Evason's tenure wasn't present in 2024, and he was fired 19 games into a very miserable 5-10-4 start to that season.
He was afforded 26 more game this time around, but the result was the same. Evason is a decent coach, something he's proven twice by turning struggling teams around when not many expected it, and he'll get another job somewhere in the NHL.
Everyone wears blame in situations where teams have to fire a head coach, and Blue Jackets fans now know a lesson that Wild fans learned firsthand.