"I met with Mike yesterday and I advised him he won't be our head coach for next season," Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher said Tuesday. "We dealt Mike a really tough hand. He's a good coach. I thought he did a really good job under the circumstances. He kept our players competing and playing hard to the end."
The Flyers (25-46-11) finished eighth in the Metropolitan Division and 15th in the Eastern Conference with 61 points and failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second straight season.
It was the first time the Flyers missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons since a five-year drought from 1989-94.
Philadelphia was 17-36-7 under Yeo, who was promoted from assistant to replace Alain Vigneault as coach Dec. 6. In eight NHL seasons with the Minnesota Wild, St. Louis Blues and Flyers, Yeo is 263-217-62 in 542 regular-season games and 17-22 in 39 playoff games.
Fletcher said he would talk to Yeo about remaining in some role with the Flyers.
"He's free to speak to other teams right now and see what options are there," Fletcher said. "Depending on how things go over the next six weeks on his end, our end, I'd love to find an opportunity, whether it's in coaching, player development, front office, scouting. He's a good hockey man. He has a lot of experience, a lot of good ideas, obviously has a lot of first-hand information on our players and the environment."
Yeo spent four seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins as an assistant (2006-10), helping them win the Stanley Cup in 2009, before becoming coach of Houston in the American Hockey League in 2010. Yeo coached Houston, the Wild's AHL affiliate, to the Calder Cup Final in 2010-11 before being promoted to coach the Wild, when Fletcher was their GM.
The Wild qualified for the playoffs three times in Yeo's five seasons and the Blues qualified for the playoffs once in his three seasons.
Yeo was the Flyers' sixth coach since the start of the 2013-14 season. Philadelphia started this season 8-10-4 before Vigneault was fired and its fortunes didn't improve with Yeo.
Fletcher said he would meet with the rest of the hockey operations department starting Wednesday to begin assessing what qualities the Flyers need to have in their next coach.
"We're going to get together tomorrow … and the first thing we're going to do is put together an ideal candidate profile," he said. "We're going to really go through a very thorough discussion on what we're trying to achieve, what we're looking at. At this stage all options are open. We're just starting the process. Once we build that candidate profile, what we're looking for, we'll start to reach out to candidates we want to interview."
The Flyers were 31st in the NHL in goals per game (2.56), 27th in goals against per game (3.59), 32nd on the power play (12.6 percent) and 26th on the penalty kill (75.7 percent) this season.
NHL.com deputy managing editor Adam Kimelman contributed to this report
