Bylsma/Buffalo inevitable?

Reprinted with permission from hockeybuzz.com


Puck Daddy's Greg Wyshynski seems to think that the Buffalo Sabres and Dan Bylsma would make for a pretty good marriage. "There are glaringly obvious reasons why Bylsma and the Sabres are a fit," wrote Wyshynski today. "There’s the fact that Buffalo is slowly becoming the cradle of USA Hockey, and Bylsma is a prominent part of that program. There’s the Jack Eichel connection, as Bylsma coached him as an assistant at the world championships in Prague."

Although Wyshinski does intoduce a far-reaching connection between Sabres GM Tim Murray, Cliff Fletcher and Bylsma, via Sportsnet's Elliot Friedman, he feels that there's one undeniable, underlying current in all of this:

"Let’s be honest here," continued Wyshynski, "one of the main reasons this is a match is Terry Pegula, who will meet whatever price Bylsma is asking for if Murray wants him; and after Mike Babcock spurned the Sabres for the Toronto Maple Leafs, one assumes Pegula would like to have a coach with some prominence and a Stanley Cup to his credit over, say, an AHL coach like Luke Richardson, who is also expected in the mix."


There's no question Pegula and Co. would feel better with a seasoned coach like Babcock and one should look no further than the Buffalo Bills who hired veteran Rex Ryan as their head coach.

But with Babcock now in Toronto and the coaching search on again,  went to hockeybuzz's own Ryan Wilson for some insight as to Bylsma and what his deal is.

The Pittsburgh Penguins blogger would direct me to three articles (thx for making me work, there buddy. just kidding.) One of his pieces went back to April, 2014, the other, from NHL.com, was from November, 2014 and Wilson's most recent blog on why "Buffalo would be smart to talk to Bylsma," was dated May 21st of this month. The running theme is whether or not Bylsma has learned from his past mistakes and whether or not lessons learned can be applied to his coaching style.

From Wilson's most recent blog on Bylsma came this quote, "[His] flaws are well documented. He was fairly stubborn with not changing up his game plan which at times got his Pittsburgh teams bottled up in the playoffs."

What his game plan consisted of, according to Wilson (from the April, 2014 piece on whether or not he should remain as the Penguins head coach,) was "the complex systems [he] runs. When they work they look surgical, when they don’t, you have the 2012 playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers." (Be it known that the teams scored an NHL record 45 goals during the first four games of the series with Philadelphia winning the first three. The Flyers would go on to win the series 4-2.)

It was a system who's complexity left even some veterans confused. Wilson quoted former Pens d-man Ben Lovejoy (who played three seasons for the Anaheim Ducks)  as saying, "Puck retrieval and breakout plays in Anaheim' system are more comfortable. It's been 100% better for me. Pittsburgh has obviously been incredibly successful playing the style they play, and when it works it's so pretty, so good.

"It's a complex style. They have players who do it very, very well. Perhaps it wasn't right for me."

Bylsma's system is predicated upon getting the puck out of the zone quickly via the stretch pass. Adam Getz of cbssports.com who follows the Penguins explained it this way on WGR550' Howard Simon Show, "They were very insistent on spending as little time as possible in the defensive zone to the point where as soon as the defensemen got the puck on their stick they wanted to be out of the zone within five seconds. It was just a go, go, go mentality.

"It definitely was an up-tempo style. They wanted to attack."

What Getz also mentioned is that when the breakout broke down, it left many odd-man rushes coming back the other way. A look at goalie Marc-Andre Fleury's stats shows regular season consistency overall, but in the playoffs when the heat was turned up a notch or two, Wilson had Fleury "playing below an ECHL-level."

Wilson did say that Bylsma's style of coaching with the stretch pass breakout "allowed the slower, less skilled defensemen to launch the puck out of the zone as fast as they could. 'Get the puck North' became a common phrase hear. Less time with the puck for lesser skilled players is good (not having lesser skilled players is better).

But in the transition game, "the problem is," continued Wilson, "that it put a lower ceiling on the higher skilled players who you want to have the puck. It is one thing to have a guy like Craig Adams and Tanner Glass post up and tip the puck in to go chase it. It is completely another thing to have Crosby and Evgeni Malkin doing the same thing. The team became predictable and thus easily defended, especially during playoff series against the same opponent."

Getz concurred. "They were never a team that wanted to carry the puck into the zone," he said. "They did dump the puck a lot, but I think the way they did it was that they were able to dump the puck to areas where their guys could get to it."

NHL.com's Dan Rosen interviewed Bylsma back in November during the coaches hiatus from coaching. Bylsma had said he had plenty of time for studying the game and one of the first things pointed out in the piece was "the grind factor on defensemen via zone-entry situations to find out
the cost and benefit between carrying the puck into the zone versus chipping it in and hunting it down," according to Rosen.

"It's minutes played and the quality of minutes you get," Bylsma said. "How many times do they go back for pucks? How long are they playing in the 'D' zone?"

"That's why I talk about the grind factor," Bylsma said. "As a defenseman it's easiest to play you face-to-face. The hardest defense to play is when you have to turn. So if you get a shot on net, the defenseman has to turn. If you make him go back for a puck, he has to turn. If you carry it in all night and he's playing face-to-face, it's the easiest defense you can play. Even though it's the best to carry it over the line, it's easiest on the defender."

It sounds as if that aspect is pretty engrained in his coaching psyche.

The Columbus Blue Jackets did a number on the Penguins and almost pulled off an upset in the 2014 playoffs. They played a dogged style that had Pittsburgh confused and unable to use Bylsma's complex system.

And if veterans like Lovejoy and Brendan Morrow were confused in that system, how would the younger players be able to grasp it? Which may be one of the reasons why Bylsma, according to Wilson,  "favored lesser skilled veteran players when higher skilled but less experienced players were available."

All-in-all, when reading things like odd-man rushes headed the other way, and favoring veterans over skilled players, I'm somewhat reminded of former Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff.

I'm not Joe "Hockey-coach Handicapper" by any stretch of the imagination as there are many others, most notably those in the general managers position on an NHL hockey team, who know the in's and out's of coahing much better than I.

Personally, it may be more important for the Sabres youngins to progress and learn the NHL game on a more fundamental level than have them try to comprehend the intricacies of a complex coaching system. And I'm not so sure Bylsma's ready to adjust his system that much.