Wild’s Yeo meets with NBA coach for shortened season advice

On Monday, Minnesota Wild head coach Mike Yeo dropped in on a Timberwolves practice to pick the brain of head coach Rick Adelman.

Why? He wanted to learn more about running a shortened training camp — and there’s no better person to ask than Adleman, a veteran of two NBA lockouts.

Here’s more, from the Minnesota Star-Tribune:

[Yeo] chatted with Rick Adelman for about 20 minutes after practice, picking his brain on, among other topics, how to plan and prepare a team to play a condensed, lockout-shortened season.

Adelman has done it twice, most recently with last season’s 66-game sked.

Yeo will get his chance, if the NHL and its players pull their heads out and reach a new labor deal before it gets too late.

Yeo called Adelman’s advice “helpful and insightful.”

“The chance to speak to a person like that with experience and his success, it’s great for a coach like me,” Yeo said.

Last season, NBA training camps opened on Dec. 9 and the regular season started on Dec. 25.

As for the preseason, teams played two exhibition games — between Dec. 16-22 — giving coaches and players roughly two weeks to prepare for the regular season.

As mentioned above, Adleman’s gone through this twice. He was coaching the Sacramento Kings during the 1998-99 NBA season, which was limited to 50 contests (and a similarly condensed exhibition campaign.)

It’ll be interesting to see if other NHL coaches follow Yeo’s lead, because few have experience with the shortened season.

Just one active bench boss was a head coach in 1994-95 (LA’s Darryl Sutter was in Chicago) — meanwhile, the likes of Adam Oates, Dan Bylsma and Kevin Dineen were still playing during that time.