Disco's History with Kris Letang
Dan Bylsma is bugging Letang about needing to play aggressively--all the time.
As a matter of fact, Dan Byslma had to bug Letang about playing aggressively at this stage of Letang's career. It's easily forgotten that Disco's first move as head-coach was to make a then-21-year-old Letang a healthy scratch. It's easily forgotten that Disco and his coaches encouraged Letang to play with his head-up (they constantly reminded him of this in 2009) and that they tolerated Letang's mistakes of aggression when he had his head-up and was playing the way they wanted him to play.
Because back Dan Bylsma became the head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Kris Letang had all the talent to be a productive offensive defenseman, but Letang hadn't yet figured out how to produce offensively in the NHL.
Flash forward to 2013. Letang is a point-per-game defenseman. Letang's pretty much been a point-per-game defenseman for the past two years (in the regular season and the playoffs). Yes, he plays with Crosby and Malkin, but so have other defensemen, and they don't score a point per game. (Scoring a point-per-game with Crosby and Malkin isn't as easy as Letang makes it look.)
Letang produces offesnively now. Letang's elite enough offensively that he can make game-changing plays (see the pass for Tyler Kennedy's first goal in Game 5 of the New York Islanders series) when he's having an otherwise "meh" or less game.
Letang now requires a different type of coaching than he once did. Encouraging aggression--which, to be blunt, Bylsma had to do in order to get Letang to become an elite offensive player in the first place--is (aside from the power play, where Letang occasionally reverts to his younger terrified-to-make-a-play-self) no longer what's holding Kris Letang back from making the most of his talents.
So, What Now?
This blog post may be moot point because Letang may want more money than the Penguins are willing to give him, and some other team and some other coach will have to figure out how to get Letang to "balance" offense with responsible defensive play. (I'm of the opinion an actual large top-4 defensive partner would help a whole heck of a lot and that any team investing in Letang would be wise to invest in getting the best from him with an appropriate top-4 (not insanely expensive, just legitimately large and top-4) partner.) Or some other team or some other coach will have another defenseman or two who focuses on "defense" and Letang's role is more to "roam wild," as he has the past couple of seasons in Pittsburgh.
But should Letang remain in Pittsburgh and should Byslma remain his coach. Letang's not 23 anymore. He's produced to elite levels offensively, and he's even been able to play defense effectively in the league too. (Letang was a player Bylsma trusted to play against Marian Hossa in the Cup Finals when he was all of 22.)
Yet Letang needs different coaching now than he did back when Bylsma started coaching him. Not coaching that corrected what his "old" issues used to be (fear of making mistakes, unable to assert himself). Now, he needs coaching that corrects his "new" issues. A league that scouts him to adjust to what they know he can do offensively. A league that knows his tendencies to be--well--aggressive, as Bylsma has long encouraged him to be in order to make the most of his physical talents.
And not to coach the aggression or the edge out of him (the last thing any team should want is a tentative Kris Letang, afraid to make plays). But to transform the aggression, once so necessary, into assertiveness.
It's already happened in parts of Letang's game. His penalty minutes per game went from over 1 per game in his breakout 2010-11 season to .04 per 60 minutes TOI this season (which is an insane level of improvement, and should give pause to the consideration that Letang won't get any better as a player than he is today). If you wondered how Pittsburgh's PK suddenly improved in the 2013 postseason, look no further than the fact that Letang--generally--played "assertively" really well on the PK (far better than he did on the PK in the regular season).
But the salary cap is the salary cap, and the Penguins have internal numbers for what they're willing to pay Letang, and Letang has numbers he wants to be paid, and those numbers may not align given that the NHL is a business, first and foremost. Should Letang move on and be some other coach's player to harness and handle, Bylsma still could--and should-- learn something from his experience coaching Letang.
That players change and grow and that once was needed for a particular player or team may not be what is needed for the player to perform well at this stage.
That line-matching might be needed to get the most from an elite talent.
That a personality might be the same, but the talent might be need to be positioned differently.
That adapting to find what works now is more important than sticking to what once worked so well.
For Bylsma to win another Cup with the Penguins, he'll have to adapt and adjust. Because even though many of the players he's coaching are the same and may even have the same temperaments and be the same people they've always been, they're different players than they used to be, with different teammates, and thus require new "handling," "coaching," and "deployment" on and off the ice.
And if Dan Bylsma wants to be coaching the Penguins for the length of his contract extension--the name of the game is to adapt and adjust. Not just for elite players, but for elite coaches, too.
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