Muse leans on experience to get Penguins out of 3-0 hole vs. Flyers

PHILADELPHIA -- Dan Muse already performed one impressive feat getting the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Stanley Cup Playoffs in what many believed would be a rebuilding season.

For his next trick, though, the Penguins coach will need to do something historic.

Trailing the Philadelphia Flyers 3-0 in the Eastern Conference First Round, the Penguins will try to become the fifth team in NHL history to overcome such a deficit in a best-of-7 series. Pittsburgh was outscored 11-4 in losing the first three games, including a 5-2 defeat in Game 3 in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

The Penguins have two days to regroup before Game 4 at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, SN-PIT, truTV, TBS, NBCSP, SN, TVAS). The players had the day off Thursday, but Muse and his staff were hard at work preparing to try to turn the series around.

“We have to win a hockey game,” Muse said. “So, we’ll have a practice tomorrow and get ready for that game and then go into that game and we need to win a game. That's entirely where the focus is right now.”

The odds are against the Penguins, but, as Muse said Thursday, “The outside expectations have been what they've been since Day One for us.”

After the Penguins missed the playoffs the past three seasons, they were expected to be a team in transition this season under Muse, a first-time NHL head coach, as they integrated younger players with their older core headed by Sidney Crosby, 38, Evgeni Malkin, 39, and Kris Letang, who turns 39 on Friday.

Pittsburgh (41-25-16) surprised many by finishing second in the Metropolitan Division with 98 points, an improvement of 18 points from last season, making Muse one of the top contenders for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year.

“He did an amazing job for them,” said Peter Laviolette, who is sixth in NHL history with 847 coaching wins, and had Muse as one of his assistants with the Nashville Predators (2017-2020) and New York Rangers (2023-25). “He should be considered for coach of the year just because they were really expected to do nothing and they were a top 10 team in the NHL (in points).

“A lot does come from the coach sometimes and he certainly went in there with a positive mindset and a game plan, and he executed it.”

Muse was the right coach for the Penguins job with his experience working with NHL players as an assistant with the Predators and Rangers and developing young players as an NCAA assistant/associate head coach at Yale (2009-2015) and as a head coach with Chicago of the United States Hockey League (2015-2017) and the United States National Team Development Program’s under-18 team (2020-2023).

Laviolette isn’t surprised by the Penguins’ success under Muse because of the 43-year-old’s track record and work ethic. Under head coach Keith Allain, Muse helped Yale become the first Ivy League team since 1989 to win an NCAA championship in 2013. He coached Chicago to its first Clark Cup (USHL) championship in 2017 and guided the U.S. to the gold medal at the 2023 IIHF World Under-18 Championship.

He was also the video coach for the U.S. when it won gold at the 2013 IIHF World Junior Championship.

“So, you know his ability to win, his ability to develop and teach,” Laviolette said. “To me, that's both sides of the coin. It was a really good fit for Pittsburgh.”

Laviolette acknowledged, “I didn't know Dan at all, not even his name,” when he began his search for an assistant to replace Phil Housley when he left to take the Buffalo Sabres head coaching job in 2017. Laviolette wanted a younger assistant to provide a different perspective on his staff of mostly veteran assistants, so he called Jim Johansson, the assistant executive director of USA Hockey who died in 2018, seeking suggestions.

“I said to Jimmy Johansson, ‘Give me some names. Give me somebody that's younger than me, smarter than me, works harder than me, is different from me, and up to speed,’” Laviolette said. “He gave me two or three names, and I called and I talked to the coaches. Dan was kind of the one that stood out.”

Muse impressed Laviolette and then Predators general manager David Poile with his preparation, including a video breakdown of their penalty kill. He went on to run the penalty kill for the Predators and Rangers under Laviolette.

After Laviolette was let go by the Predators in 2020, Muse sought more experience as a head coach and went to the USNTDP, where he coached future NHL players such as Ryan Leonard (Washington Capitals), Will Smith (San Jose Sharks), Zeev Buium (Vancouver Canucks) and Luke Hughes (New Jersey Devils), as well as Penguins prospect Rutger McGroarty.

“He was great for me and helped me with a lot of my development,” Leonard said. “It’s a lot different going from high school to that junior level and the high intensity, but he helped the young guys a lot and he was great with the leadership group there.”

A former forward who played four years (2001-05) at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts (Division II at the time), Muse doesn’t have a background as a star player, but Laviolette said that hasn’t prevented him from connecting with players.

“It's his game plan, it's his message, it's his approach,” Laviolette said. “He’s a positive person. It’s his work ethic, his knowledge. … It’s about him understanding the game, understanding people, understanding how to teach and communicate.”

All of that helped Muse quickly earn the respect of Penguins veterans such as Crosby, Malkin, Letang, Erik Karlsson and Rickard Rakell as well as younger players such as 19-year-old rookie Ben Kindel. Although the Penguins have struggled through the first three games of the playoffs, Muse has remained even keeled while trying to guide them through the biggest adversity they’ve faced this season.

“He's been just steady,” Crosby said. “I think that his message has been the same as far as what he expects and making us understand the situation or things we can improve on. But I think as far as what we want to do and there’s little tweaks that, he’s been able to do that and communicate that.”

This is Muse’s first playoff series as an NHL head coach, but he’s been through them before as an assistant, including reaching the Eastern Conference Final with the Rangers two seasons ago. He leans now on what he learned then and during his tenure a head coach in the USHL and with the USNTDP.

“As a coach, I think you are always going back to all those experiences, going through a number of series there both in Nashville and in New York,” Muse said. “Obviously, it is different as an assistant coach, but I think you can learn a lot during those. I was very fortunate working for Peter Laviolette and learned a ton from him just seeing how he operated both in the regular season and the playoffs, knowing about the experiences that he had not just in those times that we were together, but in others.”

Laviolette is one of four coaches to have come back from 3-0 series deficit to win, doing it with the Flyers against the Boston Bruins in the 2010 Eastern Conference Semifinals. At least to start, Muse wants the Penguins to take a narrower view of the daunting challenge ahead.

“We need to find a way to do more,” Muse said. “We need to find a way to go into this game and to win a game, and that's it.”