Former Minnesota Wild assistant Brett McLean named Iowa Wild head coach

The Iowa Wild announced former assistant coach and current Minnesota Wild assistant Brett McLean as its new head coach on Tuesday.

McLean spent three seasons in Des Moines between 2017 and 2020. While he was with Iowa, the Wild put together an overall record of 107-71-37. He took the assistant position in Minnesota on August 26, 2020.

Iowa announced in April that the contracts of head coach Tim Army and assistants Nate DiCasmirro and Nolan Yonkman would not be renewed. The Wild went 34-27-11 in the 2022-23 season but did not make it past the opening round of the Calder Cup Playoffs.

Army was the leading man in Des Moines for the last five seasons. The Wild were relatively successful under Army, but Iowa had won just one playoff series (2019) during his tenure.

McLean has spent seven seasons as an assistant within the Wild organization. But he always had aspirations to be a head coach, according to a 2019 interview with The Athletic.

“One thing about my career is that I had to work every step along the way to play as many years as I did,” McLean said at the time. “And I do believe that that’s very important, that coaches learn the right steps along the way to teach that to players.

“Definitely down the road, sometime down the line, I would like to put my ideas in line and possibly be a head coach.”

Before becoming a coach, McLean played 18 years of professional hockey from 1999-2017 and played 1,111 professional games. He played 385 games in the National Hockey League with the Colorado Avalanche, Florida Panthers and Chicago.

He has played in seven different professional leagues: The NHL, AHL, IHL, ECHL, SEL, Swiss-A and the Austrian League.

Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Minnesota Wild assistant Brett McLean named Iowa Wild head coach