Stanley Cup-winning coach is not buying this Rangers rebuild

Dan Bylsma is not a candidate to be the Rangers next head coach, but the man who was behind the bench for the Penguins’ 2009 Stanley Cup victory did have some thoughts on the Blueshirts’ situation — thoughts that he thinks are held around the league more abundantly than one might guess.

“I guess my first thought would be, what direction are the Rangers going, exactly?” Bylsma told The Post in a recent phone conversation. “Clearly it would seem from the last couple months and the deadline that the words ‘retool’ and ‘rebuild’ have been used. Is that the direction they’re going? Or the other rumors out there we’ve heard about some players coming back and coming back to the NHL?”

Bylsma was making a direct reference to the Rangers having inquired about the availability of Ilya Kovalchuk coming to Broadway if he decides to return from his KHL exile as a free agent. He was also referring to the possibility that the likes of Rick Nash and Michael Grabner — both of whom were traded at the deadline and both of whom are set to be unrestricted free agents come July 1 — might return, as well.

“To see where the Rangers have gone in the last two months, from being an adversary and being someone who competed against the Rangers, it’s an interesting time,” said Bylsma, who was in the same division as the Rangers until he was fired after the Blueshirts won their second-round matchup in 2014. “It’s a little bit of a different approach from the Rangers than we’ve seen in the past.”

The Rangers have been very close to the vest during this whole coaching search since they fired Alain Vigneault the night of the regular-season finale April 7 in Philadelphia. They are doing the exact opposite of their Garden brethren, the Knicks, who were overly transparent in their search that ended with David Fizdale replacing Jeff Hornacek.

The only thing that has been made clear is that the Rangers are looking for a coach considered good at developing young players, and growing with the team. That brought them to the college ranks, where University of Denver’s Jim Montgomery was interviewed before deciding to take the job coaching the Stars.

Boston University’s David Quinn has also been a candidate, but he is in a murky gray area where he told friends he was returning while not immediately telling the Rangers he was pulling his name out of consideration.

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“I’ve seen the talk that might mean a younger coach, a coach that could develop with the group as well,” Bylsma said. “It’s fairly common for that to be the focus. There are always coaches that are on their way up, so to speak. They are viewed as development coaches, I guess.”

Yet Bylsma wasn’t ruling out a veteran NHL coach to be held in that same regard for developing young players, and brought up one name in particular.

“I wouldn’t take away from Dave Tippett in that regard,” he said about the recently fired Coyotes coach. “We’ve seen him behind a NHL bench before. So why isn’t Dave Tippett a development coach? He’s developed players for a long time.”

Bylsma did make it clear that he, too, was trying to get back into coaching, having been out since a disastrous two years in Buffalo ended with his dismissal after the 2016-17 season. Since then, he has been working for NHL Network — just as he did during his previous unemployed year of 2014-15 — and he thinks the arm’s distance has given him a little bit more perspective.

And with that perspective, he’s not exactly buying the Rangers are completely tearing it down.

“I still have the question that I posed earlier,” he said. “Is this going to a long-term, or are they going to have some of these players back, more on-the-fly retool?”