Vision of third Cup drives Sullivan
No matter how long Mike Sullivan coaches in the NHL, he’s not going to break Scotty Bowman’s record of nine Stanley Cup wins. “That’s a safe bet,” Sullivan said this week, fairly giggling. But what about three Cup wins for Sullivan? Is there any reason he can’t become the 12th coach in NHL history to win three Cups? Why can’t it happen this season with the Penguins? Why can’t another Cup run start Saturday night against the Montreal Canadiens?
“I do everything I can every day to put this team in the best position to win the Cup,” Sullivan said over the telephone from the bubble in Toronto. “I get up every day thinking about it. It’s what drives me.
“If you have the opportunity to win one and experience those emotions, it motivates you to be better and strive for more. You can’t get enough of it. No way can you get enough of it. You want to win again and again. It’s worth all the sweat and hard work along the way.”
You know Sullivan’s history. General manager Jim Rutherford hired Sullivan, who largely had failed as head coach of the Boston Bruins from 2003-06, to replace the fired Mike Johnston on Dec. 12, 2015. Sullivan led the Penguins to the Cup in June 2016 and then again in June 2017. His amazing
winning streak of nine playoff series ended with a hardfought second-round loss to the Washington Capitals in 2018. His losing streak then became two series when the Penguins were swept by the New York Islanders in the first round in 2019.
Hockey, more than the other professional sports, treats its coaches with little respect. Can you believe Sullivan is the NHL’s fifth-longest tenured coach behind Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper, Winnipeg’s Paul Maurice, Detroit’s Jeff Blashill and Columbus’ John Tortorella? But it would not have been shocking to see Sullivan get fired if the Penguins had gotten off to a bad start in the 2019-20 season. The franchise is known for not having patience with its coaches. None started and finished more than four consecutive seasons before Dan Bylsma lasted from February 2009 through the 2013-14 season.
But Rutherford made sure there was no suspense with Sullivan by giving him a fouryear contract extension last July through the 2023-24 season.
Talk about a show of support.
“It meant the world to me and my family,” Sullivan said. “Working with this organization and these players has changed my life in so many ways. I don’t take a single day for granted.”
Said Rutherford of Sullivan earlier this month: “In my opinion, he’s the best coach in the game today.”
It can be argued Sullivan did his best regular-season coaching job this season. It started in the aftermath of the Penguins’ embarrassing performance against the Islanders to end last season. Rutherford lamented afterward that the Penguins never “came together as a team.”
“Of course, I looked at myself,” Sullivan said. “The standard we have set here, we didn’t reach it. We all had to take ownership of that, myself included.”
Sullivan’s message to his players at training camp — especially to the team’s leadership group headed by captain Sidney Crosby — was simple.
“Play for one another. Have discipline for details. Simplify your game. Defend. Take care of the puck. Play the right way.”
The players responded, despite facing serious injury challenges. It started when Bryan Rust, who would finish the season as the team’s leading goal scorer, broke his left hand blocking a shot in the final exhibition game and had to miss the first 11 games. Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Patric Hornqvist missed significant early time. So did Brian Dumoulin and Justin Schultz. The great Crosby missed 28 games with a core injury. Worst of all, Jake
Guentzel went down with a serious shoulder injury Dec. 30.
Through it all, the Penguins endured. Somehow, they were 18-6-4 without Crosby. They moved into first place in the Metropolitan Division on Feb. 18 with a home win against Toronto, completing a 20-5-2 run. At that point, it was hard to believe they had trailed the Capitals by 13 points in the standings after the Dec. 11 games. Sullivan was a favorite to be Coach of the Year.
“That gave us a lot of ammunition as coaches to say to the players, ‘If we play the right way, we’re going to be tough to beat when we have our full complement,’ and, ‘If we don’t play that way, we’re not going to win,’ ” Sullivan said.
“I have so much respect for the core players who have been with me here the whole time. They’re not just really good hockey players, they’re great people. I give a lot of credit to all of our players. Never once did they look for excuses.”
Sullivan admitted the dynamic changed in the dressing room and changed on how players were used after the stars came back into the lineup and Jason Zucker, Patrick Marleau, Conor Sheary and Evan Rodrigues came via trades. He called it a “discovery process” and a “feeling-out period.”
It was hard to watch. The Penguins lost eight of 10 games from Feb. 20 to March 8, the final two losses coming on a nightmarish home weekend against Washington and Carolina. After the 6-2 loss to the Hurricanes, Sullivan used the word “disconnected” to describe his team.
“It took time for guys to find their roles and be comfortable in those roles and realize how important those roles are to us winning,” Sullivan said this week. “We beat a hot New Jersey team in our last game [before COVID-19 shut down the NHL season]. I thought our team put a great game on the ice. I thought we had captured our game. I thought we finally had made it over the hump.”
Sullivan’s challenge is to make sure that positive trend carries over after more than four months without hockey.
“Our team is in a different frame of mind than it was back then,” Sullivan said. “We’re healthy for the first time. They’re excited about this group and the opportunity we have.
“This is a hard environment. The circumstances are really tough. We’re asking guys to come back after four months off, have a three-week training camp and then jump right into the playoffs. We could be out in a week or we could be playing for eight weeks. We know the stakes are high right from the start.”
I looked back to what I wrote after that bad weekend against Washington and Carolina.
More than a few people already have counted the Penguins out. I am not among them. Sullivan is the big reason.
I still believe that. More significantly, Sullivan believes that.
“I feel like I have a good relationship with the players. I feel like they’re receptive to me. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all apple pie and ice cream. There are hard conversations. This is a hard business.
“I think I just try to be straightforward. As a coaching staff, we try to see situations as they are, not as how we wish they were. We try to deal with every situation right away whether it’s big or it’s small. It’s hard. That’s what makes it so rewarding when you have some success. There is nothing like it.”
Winning the Cup this year, considering all of the hardships caused by COVID-19, will be especially satisfying for the team that does it. The Penguins, because of that lateseason slide, must play the Canadiens in the best-of-five qualifying round. They are going to have to win 19 games to win the Cup instead of the normal 16.
“It’s hard any year,” Sullivan said. “What you told me [about only 11 coaches winning three Cups] tells you how hard it really is.
“There’s just nothing like the final seconds ticking off when you know you’re going to win. You can’t explain the emotion. The NHL Network did a commercial a few years ago when they stuck a microphone in guys’ faces right after they won the Cup. Every single one was speechless. You can’t find the right words to describe that feeling. Words just don’t do it justice.”
I’m thinking Sullivan just did a pretty good job of describing it.