im curious - who felt the need to give bylsma a 5 year deal? surely he didnt have that much leverage to negotiate that. i think the only thing keeping bylsma is a job is his contract.. if it wad a 3 year deal im sure he would have been shown the door
I understood the reason why it was 5 years. It sent a message to other coaches that we're not going to leave you with an impossible task and put too much pressure on them unless you are doing harm to the development of the players. When you're trying to build an organization from the bottom like where we were, you need to send positive messages to the rest of the coaching community. Undercutting them with a 2 year or 3 year deal, I think does the team harm for lining up future candidates. Tim Murray standing behind his coach was the right move, regardless what I think of Bylsma as a coach. At this point you're giving your coach all the support, and in fact, putting some blame on himself to ease the situation, which I agree with is the thing he needed to do. Asking the coach to get the roster in a playoff contention after 2 years from being the last place team two years in a row with such horrible numbers is bad practice. You need to give the coach some rope and some support. I think the 5 year deal was going to be the ballpark term from ANY of the coaches we were going to hire.
I think what solidified the coach being the choice was more to do with Dan selling that he learned a lot from hockey from his 1 year hiatus. I can't blame the guy to do that, and unfortunately Murray's first choice of coach didn't work out.
My thinking of the what the reality of the contract should've been laid out and why I'm not too upset about the standing of the team in terms of playoffs contention:
1st year - 15-16 - This is where you lay the foundation of the team, how you want to play, start creating an identity of your team. Playoffs contention - Not important.
2nd year - 16-17 - You have the foundation, now you need to learn to win games, go through the learning experiences. Let your young guys make mistakes while trying to find their footing in the league. This is where the vets would need to be depended upon to win you games. Teach the guys to comeback from wins. Playoff Contention - try to stay in the race into late February or Early March.
3rd year - 17-18 - Gain the confidence of winning Consistently. This is where the youngs guys should be learning to take over games and making a name for themselves. We should be seeing guys in the AHL come in and start battling the vets for spots. Playoff Contention level - Stay in the race until the end of the year and hopefully claim a wild card spot.
4th year - 18-19 - We should be cementing ourselves as threats to win games, we should have a well-oiled machine of a system where the team plays like it's natural for them. At this point our young players should be leading the charge as we have a few guys from the transition roster remaining. Playoff Contention level - Should be in the lower mid-card spot or fighting for divisional spots. Playoffs should be automatic at this point.
5th year - 19-20 - We should be a top 10 team in the league at this point. Playoff Contention level: 2nd round or more.
It looks from this fan's perspective, that Dan is doing developmental harm to the players, and has been threatening to the future of this team with poor decisions that impact the usefulness of the players. I personally think Dan has met the first two years timeline just fine, but I question how Dan's decisions will allow them to be competitive from year 3 and onward. I'm not firing him because we didn't make the playoffs, I'm firing him because I have zero confidence, that he is able to get anything better out of this team, and have them play consistent competitive hockey going forward. For this reason, I feel it's time to let Dan go and find our versions of Therrien, Savard, or T. Murray.
