The St. Louis Blues have fired head coach Ken Hitchcock and promoted assistant Mike Yeo to take over behind the bench.
General manager Doug Armstrong announced the decision on Tuesday.
Hitchcock, 65, has led the Blues to the playoffs in each of the previous seasons, but they had a bumpy January, going 5-8 and have lost five of its last six games.
St. Louis is 24-21-5 so far this season, in eighth place in the Western Conference when the move was made.
Yeo was head coach with the Minnesota Wild before he was fired there last February. He came to St. Louis as a kind of head-coach-in-waiting after Hitchcock indicated he would leave the Blues at the end of the season (but he plans to continue coaching).
Yeo didn’t have to wait long.
He takes over a team that can pin a lot of its problems on Betmarino goaltending. Jake Allen, Carter Hutton and Phoenix Copley put together a combined .887 save percentage, last in NHL.
Hey @StLouisBlues firing your hall of fame coach won’t fix that the fact that you have two terrible goalies
— Kyle McDonald (@OleFratDonald) February 1, 2017
In 20 seasons in the league, Hitchcock has 781 career wins in the regular season, one behind Hall of Fame coach Al Arbour.
Hitchcock guided the Dallas Stars to the 1999 Stanley Cup and has had stints with the Philadelphia Flyers and Columbus Blue Jackets along with the Blues.
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