Sullivan, Penguins still hungry
In so many ways, this will be the strangest training camp Mike Sullivan will have overseen since becoming Penguins coach in December 2015.
For one, it’s snow-boot season in Pittsburgh already, the ongoing pandemic pushing back the start of the NHL campaign from early October until mid-January. Instead of practicing in a packed house at their practice facility, the Penguins opened training camp Sunday at an eerily empty PPG Paints Arena.
There are a dozen new players with whom he has only been able to exchange digital how-do-you-dos. Meanwhile, his three loyal assistants are gone.
And while expectations remain as lofty as ever, the Penguins for the first time since Sidney Crosby was a teenager aren’t being hyped as one of the top Stanley Cup contenders by national analysts.
Amid these unfamiliar circumstances, Sullivan’s focus hasn’t wavered.
“Nothing is inevitable in this game. There’s such a fine line between winning and losing,” he said Thursday. “There’s so much parity in this league now. It’s arguably the most difficult trophy in sports to win. We know that. We’ve been through it ourselves ... both sides of it.”
The ranks of those who were part of the back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 seemingly dwindle by the day. But Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang are still in town, along with a few other former playoff heroes.
Sullivan has savored watching them mature over the years, especially guys like Bryan Rust, Jake Guentzel and Tristan Jarry, who were there with him in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton when he started as the American Hockey League coach. They’re getting married, becoming fathers, growing as humans.
“It’s exciting,” Sullivan said. “I’ve had the privilege of coaching these guys for a fair amount of time now. To see how far they’ve come as young men and as players is one of the most rewarding things I think coaches experience.”
Seeing Crosby and Co. lift the Cup again would be pretty rewarding, too.
“That excites me, the opportunity to work with this group again,” he said.
Another early playoff exit, this one at the hands of star goalie Carey Price and the 24th-seeded Canadiens, had some wondering if Sullivan wouldn’t get that opportunity. Was he worried then that he would get fired?
“I don’t really concern myself with decisions that I can’t control,” Sullivan said. “My focus is just on what I can learn, how we can get better, how we can improve. And that’s really where my focus has been, trying to do my very best each and every day to coach this team the best way that I know how.”
Obviously, Sullivan is back, which shouldn’t have been surprising since he was rewarded with a contract extension a year earlier. But assistant coaches and good friends Mark Recchi, Jacques Martin and Sergei Gonchar are not.
Do those dismissals mean that Sullivan is entering 2021 on the hot seat?
“It’s easy to criticize the coach when the team loses,” Jim Rutherford said. “But we’ve already broken down how that series went. The coach can’t go out and have a special night to score on one of the best goalies in the game. Let’s call it the way it was. It wasn’t about coaching.”
The Hall of Fame general manager added that he thinks Sullivan is “one of the best coaches in the game” and that he “couldn’t be more confident in anything” than Sullivan’s ability to push the Penguins back into Cup contention.
“It’s the easiest thing when the media starts throwing things around. It draws more attention. People read articles or listen to talk shows. It gives them something to talk about,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is you have a guy here who won two Stanley Cups here. He’s a very good coach.”