Another one bites the dust: As NHL coaches are axed left and right, how much longer will Jeff Blashill be standing?

No one is safe in today’s NHL. Six teams that are either in a playoff spot or within five points of one have already fired their bench boss this season — eight in total league wide. Some more shocking than others, a few even being off ice related. Nevertheless, the latest scapegoat for underachieving teams hails in St. Paul.

Friday morning the Minnesota Wild announced the firing of head coach Bruce Boudreau after three and a half seasons. Boudreau joins the short list of coaches who will stay unemployed for as long as they want. Gerard Gallant is among that group, Joel Quenneville is another former member.

The decision on the part of Wild GM Bill Guerin to move on from Boudreau has raised the question of why? Boudreau’s track record speaks for itself: Third highest winning percentage in league history (.635, minimum 350 games), won his division eight out of 13 times, and a Presidents’ Trophy.

It’s especially confusing when you consider the Wild’s season has mostly been derailed by poor goaltending. I get wanting a fresh voice in the room, but finding quality coaching isn’t as easy as it sounds. If Boudreau wasn’t the right guy, that is some standard Guerin is holding the team to.

Which takes us back to Detroit. With just 14 wins to their name, the Red Wings are etching their place in history for all the wrong reasons. The club ranks dead-last in goals per game, goals against per game, and shots per game. The special teams are better but far from encouraging, with the power play and penalty kill ranking fourth worst and sixth worst, respectively.

As one would expect, this has been by far the worst season of Red Wings hockey under head coach Jeff Blashill. Yes, there are other elements to consider. The roster has gotten considerably worse year by year. But in a simplified view, the drop off has been significant. From the statistics above, the goals against and penalty kill categories, in particular, have regressed every single season of the Blashill era.

Is this the standard that the franchise wants to hold itself to? Optics wise, retaining the coach of a historically bad team is not great, especially with the way coaches of teams in the playoff hunt are dropping like flies.

Then again, is there any sympathy for a guy trying to make the most of a bad situation? That’s the same reasoning behind the Boudreau dismissal. That’s the cost of being in a results driven league. Really, the question is if this current Red Wings roster is this bad, bad enough to be light years behind the next worst team. Jared Bednar and the Avalanche are the prime example that the answer might not be so simple.

You can make the call.

Alas, even if you’re a believer in Blashill, it’s hard to ignore the likes of Boudreau and Gallant on the market. Their availability has to be enticing for GM Steve Yzerman, who has yet to hand pick his own head coach.

In fact, as we already know, Yzerman is a wild card. The veteran GM only made two hires at head coach while in Tampa Bay — Guy Boucher and Jon Cooper — neither of which had ever been an NHL head coach at that point. Entering the veteran coaching market would be somewhat of uncharted territory.

The unknown factor of Yzerman makes this an intriguing situation to follow. Does he wait it out until the offseason to make a decision? Will he pull the trigger before seasons end on a Boudreau or Gallant type? Or does he give Blashill another opportunity for 2020-21? The speculation is exciting. They’ll have plenty of options on the table.