Brett McLean was officially named Iowa Wild head coach today, by Wild GM, Bill Guerin. McLean is returning to Iowa where he spent three seasons as an assistant coach before taking on the same role in Minnesota with the big club.

Now McLean gets his first opportunity to call the shots as the head coach. He knows exactly what Bill Guerin and 2ild head coach, Dean Evason, expect from their feeder system. That should make for a more cohesive system for the Iowa Wild players to transition to the NHL and with the number of Wild prospects at an all time high, this is crucial to long term success.

So we thought this would be the first Bill Guerin hire, but since McLean was with the organization prior to GMBG's arrival that is not entirely the case. Either way all the right things were said at today's press conference about how the team will be prepared and what the expectations will be.

That said this will be yet another year where the Wild's top tier forward prospects will be playing overseas once again, and not in Iowa, or worse not in the NHL. Liam Ohgren, Danila Yurov, and Marat Khusnutdinov will all be competing in their native countries and not part of the Wild's plans for the 2023-24 NHL season.

McLean should bring a more Minnesota Wild approach to Iowa than his predecessor, Tim Army, did. There were many that were not happy with how Army ran things and down in Iowa and the change can only be a step in the right direction.

Some prosp3cts really had trouble finding their way with the way that Army ran things and his style did not lend to the way things were being done in Minnesota. Army did have success with role players, Mason Shaw Brandon Duhaime, and Connor Dewar, but the skill guys not so much.

McLean is expected to change that with his positive upbeat approach

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