Across the Hall: The return of Dan Bylsma
For two years, Bylsma was the Buffalo Sabres head coach. For seven years, he waited for his next chance to be an NHL head coach and found it in Seattle.
When someone has been trying to move forward for as long as Seattle Kraken head coach Dan Bylsma has, looking back on the past could be difficult to do. But the road Bylsma has taken to return to the head coaching ranks in the National Hockey League is one that’s come with a lot of growth, learning, and adjusting.
Bylsma makes his return to KeyBank Center on Saturday afternoon with the Kraken. The last time he was there as a coach was April 5, 2017, as head coach of the Buffalo Sabres. Even though he coached two more games that season, that 2-1 win against the Montréal Canadiens was the final time in Buffalo he was a head coach in the league.
Getting back to the NHL and being back in Buffalo after so long given how things went and ended with the Sabres is somewhat remarkable. But Bylsma’s time and dedication to coaching as well as taking advantage of an opportunity shows that hockey life doesn’t end after a disaster.
“Regardless of whether it was a short stint or not, I look back at a lot of the positives of the growth of the team in the two years I was here,” Bylsma said. “In our first year we added (27 points) in our first year and I think that group of guys—you had Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, Ryan O’Reilly, Rasmus Ristolainen—a group of guys that had a chance to continue and grow. I got smiles coming back to the rink.”
It would be easy for a coach that was in Bylsma’s position to have lingering bad feelings about how things went in Buffalo. He was hired by then general manager Tim Murray to be the man to lead the Sabres out of the tank years and into a bright, new future as a Stanley Cup contender. He had just come off coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins for five-plus seasons including winning a Stanley Cup in his first season when he replaced Michel Therrien midseason.
When he was fired by the Penguins in June 2014, it came a few weeks after Pittsburgh fired GM Ray Shero. When they hired Jim Rutherford to take over that job, Bylsma was shown the door. A year later, the Sabres called and offered him the position. This came after Mike Babcock, who they wooed openly, turned them down to take the Toronto Maple Leafs job.
The opportunity with Buffalo was immense.
The Sabres just drafted Eichel with the No. 2 pick that summer and they had Reinhart on the way after they drafted him in 2014 and spent the following season in the Western Hockey League. They acquired O’Reilly and goalie Robin Lehner ahead of the 2015 NHL Draft when they selected Eichel, and they traded for Zach Bogosian and Evander Kane late in the 2014-2015 season. The pieces were acquired, the talent level was high, but the mix as it turned out was all wrong
The various personalities and wide range of egos made for a volatile mix and with, arguably, their two best players being 19 and 20 years old, it was a chemistry lab without guidelines trying to bring everyone together on the same page. Trying to wrangle all of that and speedrun the Sabres to the playoffs turned out to be a gargantuan task despite all of the talent.
When Bylsma was fired in 2017 it didn’t come without controversy of its own. Murray was shown the door the same day and that move came days after Murray spoke of needing accountability from the players, Bylsma and himself. What stood out the year after Bylsma was gone was how seemingly relieved players were that he was out, and Phil Housley was in.
Something Bylsma spoke about when he was hired by the Kraken over the summer was about what he’s learned in the years since he was last an NHL head coach. He said over the past four years he had to discover the joy of coaching again and changing his ways and establishing better relationships with players.
One of the more direct criticisms Tim Murray had of Bylsma at the end of the 2016-2017 season was that he wasn’t a people person.
"Maybe they (the coaches) could put a coffee in their hand once in a while and do two hours of video instead of three and get out and get to know our players and talk to our players and it's about coaching individuals a little more and coaching systems a little less."
Hearing the GM of the team say that about his head coach after a disappointing season is staggering. That both were out of a job not long after that was telling.
In Seattle, it’s a new situation for Bylsma following Dave Hakstol’s tenure and although it is early on, things are appreciably different.
“He’s done well with the younger guys in Coachella so the connection with the players and the team there has been good,” Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour said. “As a team we’re struggling to win games, but he’s always positive, easy going. He’s very player-friendly and able to talk to guys when needed and does a good job of that.”
It can’t be understated how vital it is these days for coaches to have that kind of understanding with their players.
Hockey is life, yes, but everyone is human, too. Even for the most intensely competitive players in the league, it’s not 24/7 hockey and getting to know players on a more personal level is vital. When you consider what Murray said in 2017 and how Sabres players reacted to Bylsma’s dismissal, that was something he took to heart in getting back to the NHL.
“It’s not always about hockey,” Kraken forward Jared McCann said. “We talk about a lot of other things, too. He’s a big fisherman and I’m a big outdoors guy, too, so I like that. It doesn’t always have to be about hockey. Sometimes it wears on you, right? The more you kind of get away from it, the better I think it is.
“It adds a whole other aspect to the game. It adds a personal level to the game where it even translates to the ice. If I’m not playing good, I’ve got to figure it out here, that kind of thing, right? When you get on a personal level, it’s a lot easier to be able to communicate to the players.”
The future with Seattle is bright because the situation is very new. Younger players like Matty Beniers, Shane Wright, Tye Kartye and now Kaapo Kakko give them a foundation for the future. The players Bylsma worked with in Coachella Valley and led them to the Calder Cup Final the past two years are part of that equation as well. Hell, that Bylsma worked with them early on set the table for him to lead the way in Seattle.
But despite the Kraken’s early success (advancing to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in their second season), they’ve had more of the hardships of a traditional expansion franchise. But moving forward is the fun part. Looking back on where he’s come from proves that the path ahead is different for everyone.
Looking back at that last Sabres home game Bylsma coached in 2017, the lineup would make your head spin:
Six players in the Sabres lineup that night went on to win the Stanley Cup. Kyle Okposo, who was out with a terrible injury that threatened his career, was the seventh. William Carrier, who also won with Eichel in Vegas in 2023, the eighth.
Those players, many of whom left after asking for a trade, put a lot of years in the Sabres organization. That many of them were early in their careers and played for Bylsma when his career was jarred sideways a few weeks later makes for a fascinating juxtaposition. But as those players proved, life moves on and got better after Buffalo, and now Dan Bylsma has carved his own path towards doing the same, it just took time and self-assessment and growth to make it happen.
“It was exciting to be a part of that process and (there’s) just some lament over not being able to see it through because you see those guys go on to great careers, you see those guys go on to win Stanley Cups in those other spots,” Bylsma said. “It kind of makes you feel, hey, if we could’ve stuck with it for three, and four, and five more years where that team would’ve gone.”