It still stings for Dan Bylsma.
And even a salmon fishing trip in a rural portion of his native Michigan won’t provide sufficient salve.
But then again, it’s only been a few weeks and time heals all wounds.
In the last professional contest of the 2022-23 hockey season, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, coached by Bylsma, lost at home in Game 7 of the American Hockey League’s Calder Cup final, dropping a heartbreaking 3-2 overtime loss to the Hershey Bears on June 21, exactly one year after he was named coach of the team.
Bylsma, the former Pittsburgh Penguins coach who won a Game 7 on the road against the powerful Detroit Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup in 2009, remains emotional following the defeat a little more than three weeks later.
“The best time to play is at the end of the year in playoff hockey,” Bylsma said by phone this week. “The guys did a great job of coming together. The journey is not complete. The full journey is not complete until you win Game 7. It was extremely devastating and disappointing for the group, for the guys not to finish it off the right way.”
Bylsma’s journey to the Firebirds, a first-year expansion team that is affiliated with the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, was unique.
After being fired by the Penguins in 2014, Bylsma took over as coach of the Buffalo Sabres in 2015 but was dismissed from that position after two seasons. By 2018, he began a three-year stint as an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings before a mutual parting following the 2020-21 campaign.
That led to the former Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins’ head coach making a return to the AHL when Kraken assistant general manager Jason Botterill, a former Penguins executive, tabbed Bylsma to serve as an assistant coach with the Charlotte Checkers for the 2021-22 season. At the time, the Kraken did not have a full-time AHL affiliate and entered an agreement to share the Checkers with the Florida Panthers.
Once the Firebirds, based in the city of Palm Desert — located in the Coachella Valley of Colorado Desert — in Southern California, were ready to operate for the 2022-23 season, Bylsma was named as the franchise’s first coach.
“A lot of firsts,” Bylsma said. “A new group of guys, guys coming together. A new place to play in Coachella Valley, a new building that opened up.”
While the Firebirds were an expansion team, they were stocked with a roster of AHL veterans, including a handful of players who played for Bylsma with the Checkers during the 2021-22 campaign. So there were some legitimate hopes of success in Year One.
“It wasn’t a total new group of players,” Bylsma said. “And then because the Kraken have only had two (entry-level) drafts to date (of the opening of the 2022-23 season), just not very many prospect-type players (or) drafted players are in the system. … So, we knew we were going to have good players, and we knew we were going to have a more of a veteran team.
“There was some anticipation of being a good team, and it turned to be that way.”
Mike Zitek | Coachella Valley Firebirds
Coachella Valley Firebirds head coach Dan Bylsma and assistant coach Jessica Campbell.
California wasn’t foreign to Bylsma. He spent his entire playing career in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. In fact, he still holds the record for most combined games between the two crosstown rivals.
But Palm Desert and the Coachella Valley region, roughly two hours to the east of Anaheim, was a bit off the map for him.
“What did I know being a Californian for nine years in the National Hockey League?” Bylsma asked rhetorically. “I had one trip out to play golf. Kind of been there once before just to play a round of golf after a postseason one year and knew it wasn’t far from Los Angeles and San Diego and Orange County. But other than that, didn’t know a ton about it.”
That learning process was stunted a bit in the first half of the season when the Firebirds had to play their home games in the Seattle area as their home venue, Acrisure Arena, was still being constructed throughout the fall.
That meant 18 of their first 22 games were on the road. And their four “home” games over that span were a pair at the Kraken’s practice rink, one at the Kraken’s home building, Climate Pledge Arena and one in Everett, Wash.
Their first game on their home ice did not take place until Dec. 18.
Adding to the unique nature of the season was a member of Bylsma’s coaching staff, Jessica Campbell. She is the only woman in a full-time coaching role for a men’s hockey team in the North American professional ranks.
“It was unique in the standpoint of you’re asking about it,” Bylsma said. “Jessica, when I interviewed her, reminded me a little bit of myself as a young coach in thirsting for knowledge, trying to figure out ways they can help players and help the team. … She’s got a unique talent that she can bring to the group and to the guys. And she did that all season long.”
Bylsma cites the development of forward Tye Kartye as an example of Campbell’s work.
“A guy who was a free agent signing and after his overage year (at the junior level),” Bylsma said. “He was penciled in to be the fourth- or fifth-line left winger, started the season and just did an amazing job all year long of working on skills, working on his skating, working on the areas of the game he needed to improve on. And over the course of the year, turned into (AHL) rookie of the year and got an NHL call-up at the end of the year and scored some goals in the playoffs for Seattle Kraken.
“His path is a great example of what Jessica brought to our team.”
Palm Desert is long way away from Pittsburgh. But not just geographically. Coaching in the AHL is very different from the NHL, no matter the zip code. The primary purpose of any minor-league affiliate to develop players for the parent club. Wins and losses are a secondary concern.
Mike Zitek | Coachella Valley Firebirds
Dan Bylsma was hired as coach of the Coachella Valley Firebirds June 21, 2022.
But Bylsma sees a base element that is universal at any level of hockey.
“The players and the atmosphere (are) a lot like how Sidney Crosby approaches the game,” Bylsma said. “He’s always trying to get better. He’s always working on things he can get better at. Focused on hockey. And that’s the way the group was in Coachella Valley. That’s why maybe you saw the emotion out of me at the end of the press conference (after Game 7). Because the guys were diligent, always trying to work to get better as individuals and as a team. That was my experience. And if that makes the American Hockey League great, then that’s what it was. Those guys were awesome.”
It might be logical to assume Bylsma’s success with the Firebirds could be a springboard to another NHL job. Seemingly, no sport recycles coaches quite like hockey.
But Bylsma pumps the brakes on that notion. After all, the journey isn’t quite yet complete with his current team.
“What we have in Coachella Valley, what happened in Coachella Valley last year, what happened with our players and our team is all the reasons that I want to coach,” Bylsma said. “I’m perfectly content and happy with that experience. For the guys, for the team, I just want to keep doing that to the best of my ability over and over again.
“If that means it’s in Coachella Valley for the next five years, that’s great by me.”
Seth Rorabaugh is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Seth by email at srorabaugh@triblive.com or via Twitter .
