Penguins fire Bylsma, hire Rutherford, promote Botterill, Fitzgerald and Guerin - 06-06-14
In perhaps the least surprising firing in NHL history, the Penguins dismissed Dan Bylsma, the most successful head coach in franchise history.
After being named the team’s new general manager today, Jim Rutherford said:
"What ownership wants here is a complete change in direction, one with the general manager and one with the coach. We met with Dan this morning and told him. And the timing of it is good. He’s a good man and a good coach. I really don’t know him very well and I only talked to him briefly this morning. The timing is good because there are coaching vacancies and it’s not going to be long until he coaches again in the league."
Hired as a mid-season replacement for Michel Therrien in February of 2009, Bylsma directed the Penguins to the franchise's third Stanley Cup title in 2009 and stayed behind the bench the ensuing five seasons. In 400 regular season games with the Penguins, Bylsma had a 252-117-32 record as head coach. He was the franchise's longest tenured head coach.
Unfortunately for Bylsma, the postseason success he enjoyed in his first season was never replicated. The Penguins never advanced past the third round in any of the ensuing five seasons and lost to a lower-seeded team each season.
Rutherford said today he has a list of candidates in mind for a new head coach but did not get into specifics.
Assistant coaches Tony Granato, Todd Reirden and Mike Bales have been retained for the moment but have been given freedom to entertain any other job offers.
In addition to hiring Rutherford, the Penguins promoted assistant general manager Jason Botterill to associate general manager. Botterill had served as interim general manager for the past three weeks following the firing of former general manager Ray Shero. In his former role, Botterill managed the team's salary cap and served as the general manager of the AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Also the team promoted Tom Fitzgerald and Bill Guerin to assistant general manager positions. Fitzgerald had served in a role titled "assistant to the general manager" in recent seasons. Guerin was a player development coach. Each had worked primarily with the team's prospects. It is not clear how or if their duties will changes.
EN Says: Where to begin?
First, the writing was on the wall for Bylsma. He was virtually fired as soon as the team's season came to an end in the postseason. Why the team's did not fire him along with Shero a few weeks ago remains a mystery. Frankly, it wasn't fair to him either. Bylsma, for all his shortcomings, served the Penguins in a noble fashion. He deserved much, much better. He should not have lingered for three weeks, even if he knew he was going to be terminated. As he remained in limbo, vacant head coaching positions were filled in the NHL. There still are vacancies behind the benches in Vancouver, Carolina and Florida. The way Bylsma was handled did not benefit the perception of the Penguins organization around the league.
The idea that this was Rutherford's (right) call to make is suspect (to be kind). Rutherford said:
"I took the information from the people that were here. I didn't have several meetings with Dan to get to know him and evaluate him or take his side of the story. I took the information over the last week with a couple of meetings I had and we agreed making a change were a change we had to make."
Regarding a potential replacement, Rutherford said,
"The coach is going to have to adjust the style of players that we have. Because with the talent level of the Penguins, the penguins can play whatever way you want. But certainly with the teams that we ultimately have to compete with, we going to have a coach that can make the proper adjustments during a game or a certainly point of time in the regular season or during a playoff series. Obviously, the Penguins can score and they can go and they can score in bunches. But looking at the Penguins from a distance ... I don't think they could make the proper adjustments against certain teams. So that's going to be a key factor in what I'm looking at with a head coach."
One of the common criticisms of Bylsma was that he failed to properly adjust during games. Rutherford validated that school of thought today.
As far as the future of the team, Rutherford acknowledged his time frame for being this team's general manager was not long term. He said:
"I feel that we have two or three guys here that are very close to becoming general managers. And what I will do is give them big roles and a lot to say and a lot of input in my final decisions. But at the same time, I know that I am mentoring them. Nobody knows what's going to happen but I would suspect this term for me is probably two or three years here. And it's going to be up to the ownership as to who replaces me. But certainly, I will get to know these guys better. I would recommend what goes on in the future ... especially Jason [Botterill]. He's been here a long time. He's a very bright guy and he knows the game. I know he's getting very close."
Botterill (right) is probably ready to be a general manager now. He has been a candidate for vacant general manager positions in various NHL cities, including this one. Upper management may not have have seen Botterill as being ready for the position and felt the need to groom him a little further. Additionally, the perception that Botterill was "Shero's guy," even if it wasn't valid, could have damaged the reception of potentially promoting Botterill to the full-time general manager position.
Either way, Botterill seems to be in line to be the team's future general manager.
Rutherford also mentioned his intent to stress the use of advanced statistics. In his opening statement, he said:
"I'm also going to bring analytics into the organization. I don't think we're up to speed here on the use of analytics. This is something I got used to over the last few years. The analytics, if used properly, are great to really check everybody's opinion. I'm not going to make my final decision like they do in baseball just based on analytics. I'm not going to make a gut decision when it comes time to calling players up or making player trades. But I do think this is something we have to get up to speed on and I amd going to add someone to the organization in the next few weeks to put this together for us."
He added:
"The analytics are very interesting. Like I said, it's not like baseball. Baseball is an individual sports. You can either hit the ball or you can't. You can either pitch the ball in a certain way or you can't. In hockey, it's a team sport. But when you're using those analytics, there's thing that analytics are going to point to you that your hockey people don't see. So I take those points, whether it's good or bad, with a player and then I go back and start questioning the hockey people. Are we not seeing this? The analytics aren't always right. And we're not always right. So it's a great sounding board really. Being a guy that's has been around as long as I have, some people are probably surprised that I use analytics. But I've used them for a few years now and I can tell you they really make a difference."
With those two statements, Rutherford addressed advanced statistics more than Shero ever did on or off the record with the media. Under Shero, the Penguins had a system of analytics of their own creating. They did not rely on the Corsi or Fenwick numbers commonly used by media or fans. The exact nature or sophistication of that system is not known but the Penguins used them under Shero and Bylsma. As far as to what degree they used in day to day decisions, that is not known either. A few years ago, the author of this blog was told by a high-ranking member of management advanced statistics were not a major determining factor in making personnel moves.
An issue which remains unresolved is Rutherford's minority ownership with the Hurricanes. He mentioned Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos has a meeting with the NHL to get a clarification on how that issue must be addressed. Presumably, Rutherford will need to sell his stake.
---
Rutherford arrives with plenty of question marks. He had little in the way of recent success in Carolina. His drafts in recent seasons weren't much more successful than the Penguins either despite having the benefit of higher picks than the Penguins. He also didn't have the benefit of the financial resources the Penguins have as the Hurricanes were somewhat limited with regards to payroll.
Even if this is a short-term move, we have a hard time viewing this as an upgrade over Shero. It strikes us as a lateral move. And that might not be a bad thing. A change of scenery could benefit Rutherford. He had been with the Hurricanes/Whalers organization for 20 years.
Additionally, it's not like the Penguins are a bad team. They had the second best record in the Eastern Conference this past season and were one goal away from advancing to the Eastern Conference final. Have they underachieved? Absolutely. But this isn't the Edmonton Oilers or the Florida Panthers. A major retooling is not required to get this team back to the Stanley Cup final. There are some significant issues such as limited salary cap space but it's not an overwhelming rebuilding project Rutherford has inherited.
"I don't think we have all the pieces here to get back to where the Penguins were in [2009] but with some changes, they don't have to be sweeping changes. We can do this in the very near future."
(Photos: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images and Keith Srakocic/Associated Press)
Join the conversation:
