As HBO’s 24/7 told us, Dan Bylsma’s reign as Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins has pretty much been a “Steel City” dream. Bylsma’s success story is clear: He took over as Head Coach, and a few months later, he could add to his resume “Head Coach of a Stanley Cup champion”. It was under Bylsma’s direction that the Penguins had the best penalty kill in the NHL in 2010-11 and still finished with 106 points in spite of the absence of former NHL scoring champions Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin for half a season. Bylsma got All-Star level results from four talented players and still had a structure in place for the rest of the team—half of which, at one point, was composed of AHL players—to win tight games against other NHL teams.
In his coaching tenure, seemingly the only thing Bylsma has failed to do, quite honestly, is to have a power play that consistently produces to the level of the talent on the ice. When the team was still healthy last year, there was actually a darkly comical moment when Bylsma was wearing a microphone during the team’s “Inside Penguins Hockey” weekly show. Bylsma’s power play, featuring three All-Star players, was practicing a 5-on-3, and Bylsma actually stopped and asked Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang: “Which one of you is putting the puck in the net?” The players, not wearing microphones, had some sort of discussion among themselves, but Hockey Consultant was darkly amused that the Head Coach actually had to stop and ask which of his All-Star players would deign to achieve the objective of the practice exercise and shoot the puck to score a goal on the power play.
Yet, for Hockey Consultant, that scene stirs the one piece of feedback she’d have for Dan Bylsma that’s not about the power play. It’s about managing superstar players who have more skills than anybody else and, at times, go off the deep end and try to do too much themselves. Before Malkin’s 2010-11 season ended with a knee surgery, he regularly tried to do “too much” and didn’t have success at the MVP level he’d proven capable of in prior seasons. The tale of Kris Letang’s two seasons—looking like the best defenseman in hockey before the All-Star break and not close to that same level after the All-Star break—is, incorrectly, blamed on Sidney Crosby’s absence. Hockey Consultant observed that the issue was not Crosby’s absence, in and of itself, but that Letang changed his game when Crosby and Malkin went down and started trying to run the entire show himself (failing miserably, because an elite defenseman can’t defend well if his main focus is on attempting to supply the missing offense of two centers who are former NHL scoring champions).
Hockey Consultant is aware that the issues of Malkin and Letang trying to do too much could be due to their ages: They are experienced, but still young (and they weren’t born with the same preternatural maturity of a Sidney Crosby). You could say it’s on the players to learn the game and make the simple play and play within themselves. You could say that—and Hockey Consultant would agree, wholeheartedly—it is something the players have to learn, and that it’s going to be learned, at times, like it or not, through painful experience of what doesn’t work when they run around trying to control a game in and of themselves.
But Hockey Consultant has an additional take, and her additional take is this. Pittsburgh’s Head Coach, who has proven capable of letting superstars do their thing, putting role players in positions to succeed, and having AHL players come into his lineup and play within his system without missing a beat, still has plenty of room for growth when it comes to getting elite consistency from elite talents. He knows how to provide the atmosphere for the elite talent to grow, but he still has to work to do in learning how to manage the players to get them to, well—
Stop doing too much.
Make the simple play.
Your talents are awesome. Take that risk. Don’t take that one.
And when they start doing that—to stop it and correct it, immediately. The way Bylsma stops and corrects and seemingly fixes everything else. He’s got to learn how to do it with players who have elite talent but who, too often, because they try to do too much, fail to have elite consistency.
Perhaps it’s trust. Letang doesn’t try to do too much when Orpik is his defense partner. When Malkin trusts his linemates—even Max Talbot in the 2009 playoffs—he doesn’t try too hard to do everything. But when Malkin and Letang don’t have that trust, they run around, trying to do everything, and in so doing, failing to consistently perform as elite talents.
It’s on the players, of course. Ultimately, it’s on the players to perform.
But the Coach is paid for a reason. Teams have coaches for a reason. Hockey Consultant dares to suggest that if Head Coach Dan Bylsma can figure out the right conditions—and maintain them—and manage them—that he’ll soon have more people jealous of the team he gets to coach than he already does. Because he’ll have two more consistently elite talents.
And when those talents translate to the power play, well—there really will be nothing for Dan Bylsma to fix—except, of course, that is, climbing the mountain to achieve higher, year after year after year.
But for now: Figure out when and why 71 and 58 start running around. Stop and prevent those conditions if you can. If you can’t stop all of those conditions (injuries will happen), do as much as you possibly can to manage those conditions. But as soon as those elite talents start trying to do everything themselves, know this: It’s their job to play within themselves, but it’s your job to make sure they know when they're not doing that and to help to provide the conditions where they know they must play within themselves.
Coaching is always, on some level, a Catch-22. But fix that—and really, the power play, too, but that’s a whole other topic for a different day and it was 2-for-its-first-2 so Hockey Consultant will lay off for a week—and Dan Bylsma, truly, is the coach that can get results from any level of player, no matter what.
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