DETROIT -- Dan Bylsma will be the first to admit he still has to pinch himself sometimes. You know, to make sure this isn't all just a dream.
Can't blame him for that either, even if you are predisposed to believe in unlikely scenarios. Say like one where a guy still young enough to be playing in the NHL would instead be coaching a team with a chance to win the Stanley Cup. In his rookie season.
If it all seems just a little too Hollywood-esque, it may be because Bylsma spent his entire NHL playing career, such as it was, in Southern California. The 38-year-old Michigan native was a late-round draft pick of the old Winnipeg Jets in 1989 when he was a freshman at Bowling Green, but eventually ended up playing all his games in the show with the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks.
Mind you, Bylsma got in only 429 games in his decade as player. That might not seem like a great number but is still impressive considering he sustained a crushed orbital bone blocking a shot in a minor-league game in 1999, an injury that saw his face broken in 11 places and left him with nerve damage that permanently affected his smile.
"He played on will and determination," said Detroit coach Mike Babcock, who coached Bylsma in Anaheim and will now face him in the Stanley Cup Finals. "He was a good team guy, had a positive attitude all the time and obviously he's a real good coach."
Obviously.
Bylsma retired as an active player during the lockout and moved behind the bench at the minor-league level as an assistant, getting his first head coaching job at the start of this season with the Penguins' top farm team at Wilkes-Barre. But that job lasted only a few months because Pittsburgh promoted him in what appeared to be a desperate measure when it fired Michel Therrien in February.
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| Sidney Crosby says coach Dan Bylsma has brought a different 'mentality' to the team. (AP) |
And it seemed to disappear virtually overnight. Pittsburgh turned its season around miraculously under Bylsma, going 18-3-4 the rest of the way to charge into the postseason as one of the league's hottest teams.
"The attitude definitely changed," said defenseman Kris Letang. "Guys started coming to the rink with a different mindset, playing with confidence whereas before the coaching change for whatever reason, guys were just playing not to make mistakes.
"Obviously at this level you're setting yourself up for failure when you play that way. Anyone who watched our team after that will tell you we were having a lot more fun."
Winning tends to do that. The players will tell you the lighter mood in the room created by Bylsma had an impact, although the roster changes made around the trade deadline certainly added to the enthusiasm. The Penguins came up with a pair of top-six forwards in Bill Guerin and Chris Kunitz and a depth guy in Craig Adams, all veterans who have been on previous Stanley Cup winners and brought some of the "jam" GM Ray Shero said the team had been missing earlier this season.
And it didn't hurt that goalie Marc-Andre Fleury seemed to finally find his game around that time, while key puck-moving defenseman Sergei Gonchar came back after missing 56 games following shoulder surgery.
Still the biggest difference with Pittsburgh seemed to be as much about the way it started playing the game under the new coach as the personnel changes.
"We started coming at teams more, forcing them to play the way we want to play and that takes a certain mentality," said captain Sidney Crosby. "We got back to more of a high-tempo game and being more aggressive when we might have been sitting back more before."
Therrien insisted on doing things cautiously, in large part because the defensive-minded former coach felt he had to keep the brakes on after the team went through so many changes. But Bylsma, who had the interim tag removed from his title between the first and second round of the playoffs, came in stressing a more attack-oriented style conducive to a team blessed with offensive talents like Crosby and league-scoring leader Evgeni Malkin.
Still, even Bylsma was surprised by how quickly things took hold.
"I think the thing that we were concerned about is it usually takes 20, 25 games to build a foundation for your team -- how we want to play, the nuances and building the habits that you need to have to try to execute to have success," Bylsma said. "We had only 25 games while most other teams had the majority of the season, if not the whole season to build that foundation."
Obviously that was enough, even if Bylsma still has trouble at times processing it all.
"To find myself in this situation is like an out of body thing," Bylsma said. "These last few months really have been kind of surreal in a lot of ways."
Dirtdog33 
