Welcome Matt: Canucks' interest in Mike Yeo can be taken a couple different ways

There are two ways to think about Mike Yeo on the Canucks bench as an assistant to head coach Bruce Boudreau.

Elliotte Friedman is reporting that he’s heard Yeo’s name in connection with the Canucks, who are looking to round out Boudreau’s staff albeit we thought at the video coach and/or eye-in-the-sky level, not necessarily an on-the-bench position that Yeo’s résumé would likely command.

The first way to think about this is that Yeo is a failed head coach at three NHL stops now (St. Louis, Minnesota, and Philadelphia) and that he is transitioning from young head coach — he was once the youngest in the league — to senior assistant. They are sometimes called “associate” coaches.

Rick Bowness made that transition years ago, serving on staffs with younger head coaches in both Vancouver and Tampa before a late-career promotion to the big whistle in Dallas.

The idea being you want an experienced hand at your head coach’s disposal, somebody who has walked in the boss’ shoes and can command that sort of respect with the players.

The other way to look at this — and we don’t yet know whether Yeo is Boudreau’s idea or the front office’s — is that Yeo could be the interim head coach or the head-coach-in-waiting should Boudreau be fired in-season.

Alas, these are the conclusions smart hockey markets inevitably draw when your head coach is entering the final year of his contract and lame-duck status. It’s why many organizations look to avoid this dynamic.

Remember we were playing the ‘who will take over?’ game last fall when the Canucks were a sinking ship and we weren’t sure whether Brad Shaw or anyone on staff would be tabbed as an interim steward if and when Travis Green got fired.

Turned out the owner went out and hired Boudreau in consultation with his soon-to-be-hired president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford. And in retrospect, if Francesco Aquilini had just been a little more patient or hired in the proper order, these sorts of discussions might have been avoided.

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