A Grand Haven native, Dan Bylsma was a multi-sport standout high school athlete who took hockey to the highest level, playing in the NHL and then coaching a Stanley Cup winning team in Pittsburgh in 2009.
Championships have marked his athletic career starting with golf in high school where he was the Class D individual state champion as a freshman at Western Michigan Christian High School, and also the left fielder for the 1985 Class D state championship baseball team.
He played amateur hockey in Grand Rapids (GRAHA) and Muskegon before Junior B hockey in Canada and college hockey at Bowling Green State University. At Bowling Green, he was a standout player who also earned several scholar athlete awards while earning a degree in accounting.
Despite being drafted by the Winnipeg Jets, Bylsma never played a game for them, and was signed by the Los Angeles Kings in the summer of 1994. He would go on to play in 429 NHL games with the Kings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks between 1995-04, all part of 840 games played as a professional, including stints in the AHL, ECHL and IHL.
Bylsma started his coaching career in 2004-05 as an assistant coach for the AHL's Cincinnati Mighty Ducks, prior to moving on to work in the same role with the New York Islanders in 2005-06. Bylsma joined the Pittsburgh organization in 2006-07, serving two seasons as an assistant with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in the AHL (2006-08) before he was elevated to head coach to begin the 2008-09 season.
At age 38, he became interim and then head coach of the Penguins in the middle of the 2008-2009 season. He was the youngest head coach in the NHL at the time. On June 12, 2009 Bylsma led the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Stanley Cup, becoming the 14th coach and the second mid-season replacement to win the Stanley Cup in their first season. He went on to win the Jack Adams Award as the league's most outstanding coach for the 2010–2011 season, and in 2013 the fastest NHL coach ever to reach 200 wins and in 2014 the fastest to win 250.
Bylsma was also a head coach of the Buffalo Sabres from 2015 to 2017, and in 2018 was hired as an assistant coach by the Detroit Red Wings.
He has also co-authored books about preparing for a hockey career with his father, Jay.