The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2025-26 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. In this edition, Dan Bylsma, former coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, Buffalo Sabres and Seattle Kraken, and an assistant with the New York Islanders and Detroit Red Wings, discusses the importance of having a good start to the season.
One thing that's popped up in the first two weeks of the season, and it's popping up in a couple of different places, is just how important a good start is. There are 82 games, but if you go 0-3-0, there's a lot of pressure on your players.
A three-game losing streak in February is a lot different than one in October.
Half the teams in the NHL are trying to get to where the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Dallas Stars, Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights have been for the past couple years where we all know they're going to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs. When you're in the other half of the League, early wins and early losses add a lot to your team.
In recent history, the best example is the Golden Knights when they entered the NHL as an expansion team in 2017. They got everyone's castoffs, but won their first game against the Stars, started 8-1-0 and, all of a sudden, they knew they could win hockey games.
Conversely, when you're the Buffalo Sabres starting this season, they're a team that's emerging and wants to fight in the Atlantic Division and when you start 0-3-0, everybody is talking about it. The fans are walking out of the building talking about it and people like us on the sidelines are talking about it and the pressure with each play and the pressure with each game mounts.
If you get behind the eight ball, your team feels that nervous energy, your coach feels that nervous energy and it's a tough thing to fight back from the entire season.
I don't think as a coach you ever want to say "We've got to win this game" every game and have that be the focus. You want to focus on the process, but if you don't have success, the process gets real difficult with your team, with your players, with the mindset.
If you don't get wins, you can see the wear in the dressing room and among the players. Team chemistry starts to take a hit and trust within the team becomes hard to build.
You can see it with the New York Rangers. They struggled to score goals. They weren't getting results, but if you watched how they played, they were fine. The statistics, the numbers and the analytics said they were getting chances and getting high-danger chances, but they weren't scoring much, and it's a storyline. They were squeezing their sticks.
That's one where you can focus on the process and say, "Stay with it. It's going to happen. We're not going to shoot six percent for the season. It's going to come back to the mean, and we'll be fine."
