PITTSBURGH -- Michel Therrien, his team fading in the Eastern Conference playoff race less than a year after making the Stanley Cup finals, was fired as the Pittsburgh Penguins' coach on Sunday night and replaced by minor league coach Dan Bylsma.

The Penguins, who have struggled to a 27-25-5 record, fired coach Michel Therrien. Luc Leclerc/US Presswire

Therrien oversaw one of the NHL's best single-season turnarounds in his first full season in 2006-07 and coached the Penguins to within two victories of the Stanley Cup last year, but this team has struggled badly since mid-November and is in danger of not making the playoffs.

General manager Ray Shero decided to fire Therrien after a 6-2 loss in Toronto on Saturday night in which the Penguins led 2-1 going into the third period. The Penguins are 27-25-5 after winning 47 games each of the last two seasons and are five points out of the final conference playoff spot. They also are 1-7-1 in their last nine road games.

"I didn't part like the way, the direction the team was headed," Shero said on a conference call, not long after giving Therrien the news. "I've watched for a number of weeks and, at the end of the day, the direction is not that I wanted to have here. I wasn't comfortable, and that's why the change was made."

Asked how much Toronto's comeback entered into the decision, Shero said, "It wasn't so much the outcome, it was how the game was played."

Bylsma, a former NHL player and assistant coach, takes over the way Therrien did in the middle of the 2005-06 season when he replaced Eddie Olczyk during Sidney Crosby's rookie season -- called up from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the AHL.

Bylsma, hired on an interim basis but expected to coach at least the rest of the season, wants the Penguins to get back to utilizing their skill, speed and world-class players Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. Malkin is No. 1 in the NHL scoring race and Crosby, the 2006-07 champion, is third.