North Bay’s Mike Yeo will be making his international coaching debut as he has been named an assistant coach for Team Canada Men’s team at the IIHF World Championships being held in Moscow, Russia beginning in early May.
Yeo, was recently dismissed as the Minnesota Wild coach on February 14th after an eight game losing streak.
Yeo went 173-132-44 with Minnesota and was the league's third youngest coach when he was fired.
After the late February dismissal, Yeo told the Associated Press he was confident he would find work again.
"I want to coach,'' Yeo told the Associated Press.
“That's in my blood. That's who I am and I really believe my best days as a coach are ahead of me.''
The North Bay native may be right.
He will joined on the Team Canada bench by Head Coach Bill Peters of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Dave Cameron of the Senators will be another assistant coach.
The former IHL and AHL forward has most recently spent over four seasons as head coach of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, following a season as head coach of the AHL’s Houston Aeros.
Yeo was an assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins from 2006-10, following his six seasons as an assistant coach with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the AHL.
Yeo celebrated his Penguins Stanley Cup victory by sharing the trophy with the city of North Bay in the summer of 2009.
Canada opens the 2016 IIHF World Championship in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, against the United States on Friday, May 6, with preliminary-round games scheduled through Tuesday, May 17. The bronze- and gold-medal games will be hosted in Moscow on Sunday, May 22.
Team Canada went undefeated at the 2015 IIHF World Championship in Prague and Ostrava, Czech Republic, on its way to its first gold medal in eight years. Since 1931, Canada has won the world championship 19 times – not counting the years when Olympic Winter Games gold-medallists were also considered world champions. The country has also collected 11 silver medals and six bronze in that time span.
