How bad of a coach was Dan Bylsma

[Remington 700]

Yes... but was that because that's how Shero wanted the roster constructed, or that's how DB wanted it? Shero deserves his own blame, but I'm unsure how much of that one I'd be placing on him.

Well from 2006-2008 before Bylsma arrived Shero was giving Therrien the likes of Sykora, Roberts, Laraque, Adams, Sydor, and Eaton while leaving guys like Welch in the minors or cutting Ouelette. Granted the latter 2 guys never panned out but it shows a pattern from Shero while he was here.

 

[Riptide]

I dont wonder about this at all, I know for sure that he was the main problem from 2010-2015

2013? Yep, without a doubt. The rest of the years? He was an issue, but after watching the 2016 Penguins completely dismantle the league in the POs, made me realise that those years 2010-15 (2013 aside), the team simply wasn't skilled enough up front. We only ever had 1 winger who could potentially make a play and pull coverage from Crosby or Malkin (Jokinen), and we completely f***ed that up with playing him on the same line as Neal.

Now by comparison, we have 3 wingers like that (Kessel, Guentzel, Sheary). That along with significantly better overall depth is why we have a chance to do something that hasn't been done in 3 decades. So while DB was a terrible coach, I only blame him for 2013. We might have done better in the other years... but realistically, we were never going to win it all (or shouldn't anyway), so I do not really blame him so much, as look back on that roster and realize that it simply wasn't good enough.

 

[SEALBound]

There was a healthy balance of Bylsma and Shero for who held the Penguins back.

Shero kept trading away the future for garbage, non-impact rentals after the Cup. And what young, promising guys we DID have, Bylsma wouldn't play them.

At one point: Morrow, Despres, Maatta, Harrington, Pouliot...was considered the best young defensive prospect core in the league. Maatta got his play time but no one else ever really got the chance.

Bylsma was very stubborn too. He believed his system and choices would overcome so he made exactly ZERO adjustments ever come playoff time when then, more than ever, was the time to coach. He thought that if they just "got to their game" everything would be fine. He also had an unusual love connection with Craig Adams who along with Tanner Glass, were constantly bottom 5 players in the league (and this was supported by stats and adv stats).

Healthy balance but both were VERY much responsible for a lack of success after 2009. Imagine if you go back to the 2012 draft...and Shero takes Forsberg or Trouba over Pouliot. The Forsberg one still baffles me to this day. Sid needed a high skill wing more than ever...and you had one sitting there for the taking...and you take Pouliot. Woof.

In 2013...Shero mortgages the entire farm to bring in Iginla, Morrow, and Murray. Morrow was decent but ultimately of no impact. Murray was a pylon that we paid 2 2nds for. Iginla was a future HOF right wing...and Bylsma stuck him on the left wing of Malkin so that he could keep Kunitz-Crosby-Dupuis together. Shit like that is just maddening looking back.

The ONLY saving grace of that fiasco...was the Morrow trade:

B. Morrow + 3rd for J. Morrow + 5th. Who did that 3rd round pick turn into? Go look it up...and then smile.

 

[madinsomniac]

Issues with Dan Bylsma...
#1 Bad overall philosophies: Was a fourth liner who was confirmed to have a distaste towards skilled players... wanted every player to play grind it out hockey... had an obsession with skilled players throwing hits, which led to a lot of the Pens injury woes in this time

#2 Strategically inept system plans: He had no concept of puck support...defensemen were systematically hung out to dry.... his plan for every breakout from his own zone was a defenseman firing within X seconds of getting it on his stick up ice to a cherry picking forward...

#3 Aversion towards younger players: while he did make some early excpetions for guys he coached in WBS, he basically fell into that old school mentality that a bad vet was more valuable than an inexperianced young guy, leading to stunted development for a lot of high end players for the Pens.
The pens had the deepest prospect pool for years at D, yet guys like Mark Eaton and Broke Down Scuderi kept these young guys in the minors or rotting on the bench while they developed the bad habits Bylsma seemed to want in a defenseman...

#4 No accountability/ No discipline... Practices were free for alls and often optional even after really bad play. He encouraged returning physical play for physical play, and dirty hit for dirty hit... this led to monumentous meltdowns where this super skilled team would focus on physical revenge over scoring.... Veterans could make the same blunders 100 times but a young guy that did it once was never seeing the ice again

#5 No in game adjustments... ever.... the team played almost the same way vs every other team and when whatever small pre game adjustments Bylsma's staff thought would work wasn't, he would say they had to "get to their game" and plow through... every loss was cause they didnt "get to their game" and ran into a "hot Goalie"... nothing he could do about that....

#6 Totally held grudges to the detriment of the team.... demoted then benched one of the Pens better skilled wingers in peter skykora more or less because Sykora took his NHL spot and got him demoted to the AHL back in the day (Sykora confirmed this in an article after he left the Pens)... Played Iginla in the most absurd roles (off wing, away from crosby, and demoted from Power play for the reason that "teams were going to figure him out") because of some grudge from their playing days...

The thing was, his plans and strategies were great if a team had no skill and was trying to win with total grunts... but he had no clue how to maximize skilled players at all... he neutered the teams skill and made them easy to defend... there was a reason the team didnt see a drop off when they had the big time injuries they did... when they had the Crosby's , malkin's and Letang's heathy they won easier, but the system was built for four fourth lines, more or less... grind bitches Down mentality... works for that 4th line player seeing 8-10 minutes a game, but that was not good for stars playing 20 minutes a game...

 

[Rodgerwilco]

I'd actually say our roster was more of a problem throughout that stretch than anything. Here are the primary problems I would say caused our loses:

2010: depth issues/terrible D
2011: injuries to Sid and Geno
2012: goaltending terrible
2013: Disco Dan/fleury bad
2014: depth compared to the Rangers
2015: depth issues compared to Rangers/terrible D

If we had just about any other coach with us, most of our issues during these years wouldn't magically have gone away. The team was fundamentally flawed for years.

To only put one of those season's on Bylsma is giving him an easy out, in my opinion. He consistently showed in the playoffs that he is unable to make effective in-game adjustments and couldn't control the team. They lost their minds against Philly pretty much every game when Disco was in Pittsburgh.

There was a lot of opportunities when the Penguins could have had success throughout those years, but Dan held them back a lot. I'm not saying Dan was the ONLY problem, I'm saying he was a big problem. I will agree with you thrat through 2010-15 there was a variety of different issues, but the common Dan-ominator was there the whole time (see what I did there?)

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Issues with Dan Bylsma...
#1 Bad overall philosophies: Was a fourth liner who was confirmed to have a distaste towards skilled players... wanted every player to play grind it out hockey... had an obsession with skilled players throwing hits, which led to a lot of the Pens injury woes in this time

#2 Strategically inept system plans: He had no concept of puck support...defensemen were systematically hung out to dry.... his plan for every breakout from his own zone was a defenseman firing within X seconds of getting it on his stick up ice to a cherry picking forward...

#3 Aversion towards younger players: while he did make some early excpetions for guys he coached in WBS, he basically fell into that old school mentality that a bad vet was more valuable than an inexperianced young guy, leading to stunted development for a lot of high end players for the Pens.
The pens had the deepest prospect pool for years at D, yet guys like Mark Eaton and Broke Down Scuderi kept these young guys in the minors or rotting on the bench while they developed the bad habits Bylsma seemed to want in a defenseman...

#4 No accountability/ No discipline... Practices were free for alls and often optional even after really bad play. He encouraged returning physical play for physical play, and dirty hit for dirty hit... this led to monumentous meltdowns where this super skilled team would focus on physical revenge over scoring.... Veterans could make the same blunders 100 times but a young guy that did it once was never seeing the ice again

#5 No in game adjustments... ever.... the team played almost the same way vs every other team and when whatever small pre game adjustments Bylsma's staff thought would work wasn't, he would say they had to "get to their game" and plow through... every loss was cause they didnt "get to their game" and ran into a "hot Goalie"... nothing he could do about that....

#6 Totally held grudges to the detriment of the team.... demoted then benched one of the Pens better skilled wingers in peter skykora more or less because Sykora took his NHL spot and got him demoted to the AHL back in the day (Sykora confirmed this in an article after he left the Pens)... Played Iginla in the most absurd roles (off wing, away from crosby, and demoted from Power play for the reason that "teams were going to figure him out") because of some grudge from their playing days...

The thing was, his plans and strategies were great if a team had no skill and was trying to win with total grunts... but he had no clue how to maximize skilled players at all... he neutered the teams skill and made them easy to defend... there was a reason the team didnt see a drop off when they had the big time injuries they did... when they had the Crosby's , malkin's and Letang's heathy they won easier, but the system was built for four fourth lines, more or less... grind *****es Down mentality... works for that 4th line player seeing 8-10 minutes a game, but that was not good for stars playing 20 minutes a game...

/thread.

 

[justafan22]

I mean he wasn't a great coach, but:

2010: Halak'd

2011: Crosby gets blindsided by Steckel, Malkin blows out his knee

2012: Lose their minds vs Philly, Fleury chokes and they play stupid hockey

2013: Crosby gets a puck to the face, isn't the same for a bit, and Rask/Bergeron/Chara shut them down

2014: Zero depth, blow a 3-1 lead to the rangers and Fleury doesn't play well.

2015: Johnston's first season, lose to the rangers is 5 with bad depth and a meh roster.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

2013? Yep, without a doubt. The rest of the years? He was an issue, but after watching the 2016 Penguins completely dismantle the league in the POs, made me realise that those years 2010-15 (2013 aside), the team simply wasn't skilled enough up front. We only ever had 1 winger who could potentially make a play and pull coverage from Crosby or Malkin (Jokinen), and we completely ****ed that up with playing him on the same line as Neal.

Now by comparison, we have 3 wingers like that (Kessel, Guentzel, Sheary). That along with significantly better overall depth is why we have a chance to do something that hasn't been done in 3 decades. So while DB was a terrible coach, I only blame him for 2013. We might have done better in the other years... but realistically, we were never going to win it all (or shouldn't anyway), so I do not really blame him so much, as look back on that roster and realize that it simply wasn't good enough.

I agree that there wasn't enough depth skill, but like I said before, the common thread was Bylsma, through every year, the team was never disciplined, he never adjusted to their opponents, no one was ever accountable.

 

[harmonica]

To only put one of those season's on Bylsma is giving him an easy out, in my opinion. He consistently showed in the playoffs that he is unable to make effective in-game adjustments and couldn't control the team. They lost their minds against Philly pretty much every game when Disco was in Pittsburgh.

There was a lot of opportunities when the Penguins could have had success throughout those years, but Dan held them back a lot. I'm not saying Dan was the ONLY problem, I'm saying he was a big problem. I will agree with you thrat through 2010-15 there was a variety of different issues, but the common Dan-ominator was there the whole time (see what I did there?)

We are basically saying the same thing. My point was that he wasn't the primary problem most of those years. Yes Disco often made things worse, but you can't polish a turd. No matter what coach we could have had, they would have never been able to overcome all of our fundamental problems. Look to the Leafs this year. You have arguable one of the best coaches in the world, but it doesn't matter because their roster is fundamentally flawed, very much in similar ways we were. Rosters are more important than coaches.

 

[Riptide]

Sykora confirmed this in an article after he left the Pens

You have a link to that?

 

[Rodgerwilco]

I mean he wasn't a great coach, but:

2010: Halak'd

2011: Crosby gets blindsided by Steckel, Malkin blows out his knee

2012: Lose their minds vs Philly, Fleury chokes and they play stupid hockey

2013: Crosby gets a puck to the face, isn't the same for a bit, and Rask/Bergeron/Chara shut them down

2014: Zero depth, blow a 3-1 lead to the rangers and Fleury doesn't play well.

2015: Johnston's first season, lose to the rangers is 5 with bad depth and a meh roster.

- Halak had a good series, but it's an easy out to say he was Pittsburgh's issue.

- Part of a coach's responsibility is to keep his team under control, they lost their minds and Bylsma let it happen. He was never able to make any player accountable or disciplined.

- 2013 was without a doubt the worst display of coaching in Bylsma's tenure. The whole way through getting swept he never made any significant adjustments to the game plan, never made any significant changes in the lines. He played on the left wing after a brief 16 years of playing right wing as one of the better scoring wingers in the league.

 

[SEALBound]

I mean he wasn't a great coach, but:

2010: Halak'd

2011: Crosby gets blindsided by Steckel, Malkin blows out his knee

2012: Lose their minds vs Philly, Fleury chokes and they play stupid hockey

2013: Crosby gets a puck to the face, isn't the same for a bit, and Rask/Bergeron/Chara shut them down

2014: Zero depth, blow a 3-1 lead to the rangers and Fleury doesn't play well.

2015: Johnston's first season, lose to the rangers is 5 with bad depth and a meh roster.

It's funny how you think, with the exception of 2011, that NONE of those issues you described were related to coaching

2015 was particularly bad because they lost Letang going into the playoffs. Taylor Chorney was the #7. Pens were lucky to even get that one game.

 

[tony d]

Both Bylsma and Johnston were terrible coaches, really held the Penguins back a lot. Mike Sullivan was the right coach for the team.

 

[madinsomniac]

I am not dismissing the roster makeup, but a lot of roster woes are tied to coaching decisions... we had plenty of skilled, fast albeit undersized guys come through the AHL when bylsma was here and few got real sniffs of the roster... and the few that did were exorcized from the roster asap or demoted to obscurity so Adams and Glass could get more ice time... we have a laundry list of mediocre "physical" wings that filled out the roster during that time... the coach played them over anyone who might show speed or skill... I mean it wasnt like he was ever using Dustin Jeffery like we do sheary or rust or anything... that dude was in Bylsma's mind an afterthought that he only gave ice time when injuries forced him to...

When we did have skilled wingers or prospects, they played mostly on the bottom lines so sid could play with Kunitz and Dupuis... even when that line was struggling and we had other options... I mean we trained fragile as hell Bennet to be a checking line winger..lol.

And its kind of suspicious that free agents really shunned the team during his tenure... outside of Paul Martin... we were in the running for a lot of guys who opted to go elsewhere... and the whole front office including the coach seemed adament skill at wing was a non starter for them...

Again lets look at the on ice use of Jarome Freaken Iginla and tell me that the coach wasnt a huge issue during that period

 

[KIRK]

As far as I'm concerned, Bylsma is a curse word.

I think that's pretty insulting to curse words.

EDIT: How bad of a coach was Bylsma? On a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being the worst and 100 being the best, Bylsma was a -274. Gladams. Iginla on the LW. Malkin on the RW with Mike Comrie and future hall of famer Eric Tangradi. And, that's just the personnel stupidity.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

I think that's pretty insulting to curse words.

EDIT: How bad of a coach was Bylsma? On a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being the worst and 100 being the best, Bylsma was a -274. Gladams. Iginla on the LW. Malkin on the RW with Mike Comrie and future hall of famer Eric Tangradi. And, that's just the personnel stupidity.

Don't forget his quote (paraphrasing) about how in 2013 he had too many options available to use, as a reason for why they failed against Boston.

"My GM gave me too many good players! I didn't know what to do with them all, so I decided to play bad ones instead".

 

[Canucks1096]

I agree Bylsma wasn't a great coach but pretend if Sullivan was the coach from 2010 to 2015. Don't think they would of won more cups. There was no Kessel from 2010 to 2015. No Kessel, no back to back cups.

A few users said the team was stacked in 2012 and 2013. They were a good team but I wouldn't use the term stacked. 2016 and 2017 team was noticeable better. A team that is stacked to me if they have goal scorers/top 6 F on the 3rd line and have top pairing D that are number 3 or 4 on the depth chart. 2010 to 2015 they didn't have that. Cooke and Kennedy were 3rd line players playing on the 3rd line. Nothing Stacked about that.

 

[KIRK]

Don't forget his quote (paraphrasing) about how in 2013 he had too many options available to use, as a reason for why they failed against Boston.

"My GM gave me too many good players! I didn't know what to do with them all, so I decided to play bad ones instead".

Honestly, I try to imagine how bad of a coach Bylsma was . . . and then I remember that he was worse.

 

[BillPrep]

You have a link to that?

here? sorta...I guess...

Petr Sykora Won't Return to Pittsburgh, But Not Because of Salary Cap

"It’s never a good thing when you are coached by a former teammate. On top of that, he used to be a player who drifted around as a fourth-liner. I was younger than him, played on the top line, scored goals, was the little star. Now the roles got reversed, and from the first moment I had a feeling that he let me ‘eat it.’ I honestly say that I have not had liked him even as a teammate. Which does not happen to me often."

 

[TheAngryHank]

After the cup win in 2009 He was an elite coach for about two years according to one teams fans.Shero was also the best GM in the league.It's to bad those threads are gone.
That tune changed around 2011-2012.
Good times.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

After the cup win in 2009 He was an elite coach for about two years according to one teams fans.

Jets fans lie any chance they get.

 

[Revelation]

I don't think I've seen another coach be more concerned with getting even with all the guys that outplayed them during their NHL career than winning.

 

[Remington 700]

After the cup win in 2009 He was an elite coach for about two years according to one teams fans.Shero was also the best GM in the league.It's to bad those threads are gone.
That tune changed around 2011-2012.
Good times.

Yeah, you should’ve seen the threads from around July of 2005 from one teams fan base that were absolutely convinced the NHL was going to rig the Crosby lottery because he needed to be in New York. They couldn’t contain their excitement about the impending arrival of 87. Better times.

 

[TheAngryHank]

Yeah, you should’ve seen the threads from around July of 2005 from one teams fan base that were absolutely convinced the NHL was going to rig the Crosby lottery because he needed to be in New York. They couldn’t contain their excitement about the impending arrival of 87. Better times.

What does one have to do with the other?

 

[end]

Bylsma is a 4th liner's coach, in that all he knows is 'grind their asses down'. He put the Penguins over the Red Wings by inheriting Therrien's great cycle scheme, but adding the ability to match lines and adjust within a game. He probably also added a degree of accountability or motivation that Therrien had ran out of by then, as Therrien's only tool to motivate his team is to pick on certain players and run them down in the media. But the weakness of Dan Bylsma is that 4th line problem; work ethic but no creativity. We had a bad powerplay despite having the best offense in the league. The zone defense never really worked like how he planned, it always seemed to get sliced up by teams with decent passing. That 2012 series has some Harlem Globetrotter-like goals by the Flyers.