PITTSBURGH — There is something perversely ironic about the current state of the Rangers and Penguins, after the two clubs swapped coaches this past summer.
Serving as an assistant under Peter Laviolette in New York the previous two seasons, Dan Muse was charged with getting an older Penguins team back on track while general manager Kyle Dubas retools a roster that is bracing for life after the Big Three of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.
Muse and the Penguins were sitting in second place in the Metropolitan Division entering Saturday’s matchup with the Rangers.
The end of Pittsburgh’s three-season playoff drought is well within reach.
What a way to begin an NHL head coaching career.
Mike Sullivan, who won two Stanley Cups and spent the past decade with the Penguins, was brought to New York to salvage the championship window.
A disagreement on the timeline back to success reportedly led to Sullivan’s departure from Pittsburgh, so joining a Rangers team that expected to be competitive was a preferable landing spot.
On the day the Penguins were celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2016 Stanley Cup win, however, Sullivan came into PPG Paints Arena with the Rangers sitting in dead last in the Eastern Conference.
Just two weeks prior, the club announced its intentions to retool and decided not to extend star wing Artemi Panarin.
The start of his Rangers tenure certainly hasn’t gone the way he imagined, but the progress his former team has made hasn’t come as a shock.
“It doesn’t surprise me, because I think the core guys that have been here as long as they have, they’re a unique group,” Sullivan said Saturday, before the Rangers lost, 6-5, to the Penguins. “And although they are aging, there’s still elite-level play in their game. It’s driven by Sid, their captain. Does it surprise me? No, it doesn’t. I think they’ve done a great job as far as becoming a team, and some of the young guys they added, and some of the pieces they added along the way.
“When you look at the top line, they drive, they’re the heartbeat of the team and have been for a number of years. All the elements are in play. Their special teams have been really good. They’re getting saves. It’s a good recipe.”
The Rangers job now looks a lot different than it did just under four months ago.
It could be some time before the team starts experiencing consistent success again, and that’s not exactly what Sullivan signed up for.
He has already made it clear he is still coaching to win.
Sullivan is not a development coach, but he is a player’s coach.
Perhaps it could be beneficial for Sullivan to have this time to not only shape the organization’s youngsters into his system, but also foster the types of relationships that he has built his reputation on.
Considering the switch-up, there is understandably some doubt surrounding Sullivan’s fit for what’s ahead.
But he is the coach that president and general manager Chris Drury has wanted at the helm of his team.
One of the loudest criticisms of Sullivan’s tenure in Pittsburgh was his management of youth.
Though there really wasn’t much for him to work with back then.
An abundance of rookies have already infiltrated the Rangers lineup, some of whom Sullivan has entrusted more and more.
There is belief that Sullivan’s preexisting relationships with the Wilkes-Barre players who were promoted to the Penguins in 2016 played a major factor in the team’s ascension to Stanley Cup champions.
“We’ll explore our lineup for sure, and we’ll move people around,” Sullivan said when asked if he can experiment in ways he maybe wouldn’t have if the Rangers weren’t in their current situation. “We already have, and we’ll continue to do so based on what we see, and where we think we can put players in positions to be successful and give an opportunity to play to their strengths. That’s what we’re trying to do. Gabe Perreault is a perfect example right now, and the opportunity he’s getting in the position that he’s in. But he’s not the only one. There’s a number of them.
“We’re going to continue to try to get to know this group even more so than we know them now. We’ll continue to assess and we’ll continue to learn and grow together as a group, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
Sullivan later added: “I’m going to do my best to meet those challenges to try to help this organization move forward.”
