Wild and Wolves: Coaching Experience Wanted

English: Bruce Boudreau during warmups of Game 2 of the Washington Capitals vs Pittsburgh Penguins 2009 Stanley Cup Conference Semifinals. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Head coach Tom Thibodeau of the Chicago Bulls looks on from the sideline against the Washington Wizards at the Verizon Center in Washington on February 28, 2011 in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two of Minnesota's pro sports franchises, the NHL Wild and NBA Timberwolves, have come to the conclusion that experience is the best teacher, deciding to hire men who have already had success coaching in the NHL and NBA to see if they could fix whatever ails those teams.

The Wild hired Bruce Boudreau, who until recently led the Anaheim Ducks and Washington Capitals to consecutive division titles and Stanley Cup playoff appearances.  But his teams have had a tendency to lose the seventh game of a playoff round, which is why the Ducks ended up letting him go.

Boudreau replaces John Torchetti, the interim coach who was part of a long line of assistants and minor league coaches the Wild promoted to the top job with mixed success.  The last coach the Wild had with previous NHL experience was their first one, Jacques Lemaire.  He had won Stanley Cups as a player with the Montreal Canadiens, and as a coach with the New Jersey Devils.  The defensive style he imposed on the team served the Wild well in their beginning years, including a 2003 playoff run that ended when they lost the Western Conference title to the Ducks.

Boudreau will be asked to lead a team that, for all the big-money players on their roster signed to long-term contracts, have been underachievers who barely made the playoffs this past season.  The fact that the Wild lasted six games before losing to the Dallas Stars in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, when everyone thought they'd be gone in four or five games, should be considered an accomplishment.

The Timberwolves have had coaches with previous NBA experience before (Bill Musselman, Rick Adelman and Sam Mitchell come to mind), but they were all pretty much asked to keep a team with inferior talent afloat.

The situation is much different now with the arrival of Tom Thibodeau as the new Wolves coach and chief of basketball operations.  Thibodeau, who replaces Mitchell, previously led the Chicago Bulls to consecutive NBA playoff appearances before being let go in a dispute with management.

Here Thibodeau gets to coach a team that basketball experts think is on the rise with young talent like Anthony Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, yet hasn't made the playoffs in more than a decade.  All he has to do is to not run his players into the ground, which is something he was accused of doing when he was with the Bulls.

Do the Wild and Wolves really think experienced hands like Bruce Boudreau and Tom Thibodeau will help take them to where they want to go?  They'd better hope so.  They've tried everything else.  And unlike real teachers, pro coaches don't have tenure.