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Q: Dan Bylsma's head-coaching career is off to such a spectacular start that it makes names like Toe Blake and Punch Imlach come to mind. Do you think he can sustain that success over a long period of time, or do you think factors like the salary cap, free agency or even GM transition eventually will start to take their toll?

Richard Hocevar, Ashland, Ky.

MOLINARI: Bylsma has had a moderately successful start to his NHL coaching career, hasn't he?

He took over a team that was in 10th place in the Eastern Conference in mid-February, and led it on an 18-3-4 surge that lifted it into fourth place in the conference. For an encore, he became just the first coach since Al MacNeil of Montreal in 1971 to take over a team in midseason and guide it to a Stanley Cup.

Neither Bylsma nor his players have shown any serious signs of letting up, either, as the Penguins are off to an 11-3 start and have consistently found ways to win when there was reason to believe they would not. Bylsma clearly has pushed the right buttons with his personnel, who have responded well not only to his up-tempo, aggressive style of game, but to his upbeat personality.

But while Bylsma deserves a lot of credit for what the Penguins have accomplished in 2009, there's no reason to think that he can defy the truism that a coach can only be as good as his players will allow him to be. For example, the greatest coaches in hockey history -- guys like Toe Blake and Scott Bowman and Al Arbour, among others -- would not have been able to turn the 2003-04 Penguins into a playoff team. While a bad coach can sabotage a good team, a great coach can't singlehandedly transform a bad club into a contender, even if he can coax it into realizing its full potential.

The good news for Bylsma is that the Penguins have most of their outstanding young players under contract for a number of years so, barring a run of major injuries or some similar misfortune, he should be able to keep the team in a position of prominence for the foreseeable future. Most coaches have a shelf life and have players begin to tune them out once the expiration date arrives, but all indications at the moment suggest that Bylsma's won't arrive for quite a while.

Q: The Penguins have some good talent at their Wilkes-Barre/Scranton affiliate, guys like Luca Caputi and Eric Tangradi. Why, when the Pens need to call a guy up, do they choose Chris Conner? I feel like Tangradi and Caputi are the next big wingers for the Pens, but they seem reluctant to call them up. Is it something that is lacking in their game or do the Pens feel they need more development?

Fred, West View

MOLINARI: Tangradi and Caputi are, to be sure, two of the Penguins??? top prospects, and certainly the most promising wingers on their minor league team in Wilkes-Barre. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that they were the logical candidates to be brought up when the Penguins lost Tyler Kennedy and Evgeni Malkin last week and summoned Conner and, briefly, Mark Letestu.

Tangradi, who has had a shoulder injury for much of this season, has real power-forward potential, but also will benefit from time to develop in the minors. While he might make a cameo or two in the NHL at some point during the season, he???s a good enough prospect that management doesn't want to derail his development by rushing him to the next level.

The same point can be made about Caputi, who had four goals and two assists in nine games before the Baby Penguins played the Toronto Marlies yesterday. He's in his second pro season and logged a little time with the Penguins in 2008-09, but remains a work-in-progress and is better-served by playing regularly in the American Hockey League than he would be by having a cup of coffee in the NHL.

Finally, while Conner doesn't have the long-term potential of Tangradi or Caputi, he was the Baby Penguins' leading scorer at the time of his recall, with two goals and six assists in seven games, and had played 71 games in the NHL before bumping that total to 73 this weekend. What's more, Conner was among the Penguins' final cuts during the preseason, so it hardly was a reach to think that he could step in at this level, at least for a while.

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