The shock of Friday’s dismissal of Bruce Boudreau, both throughout the NHL and inside the Wild dressing room, had to do with the timing.



With all due respect to a coach that has won the 22nd-most games in NHL history, most everyone, including Boudreau himself incidentally, felt it was obvious that first-year general manager Bill Guerin planned to bring in his “own guy” to coach the Wild in the offseason.



But after Boudreau survived a 3-7 start to this season, last month’s lineup snafu and blowout loss in Pittsburgh, the late-game meltdown vs. Florida right before the All-Star break and the five-goal home loss to Boston coming out of the bye, most accepted and assumed that Boudreau was being given the latitude to coach out the string before the inevitable coaching change occurred.



That’s why Friday’s decision surprised the heck out of everyone, nobody, of course, more than the unsuspecting coach with 567 career victories who...