Penguins sign coach to four-year extension

PITTSBURGH — Mike Sullivan is sticking around to see if he can get the Pittsburgh Penguins another Stanley Cup.

The coach whose arrival in the winter of 2015 helped propel the Penguins to championships in 2016 and 2017 agreed to a fourcontract extension Friday that runs through the 2023-24 season. The terms of the new deal will kick in when Sullivan’s current contract expires at the end of the upcoming season.

Sullivan was entering the final year of a threeyear contract he signed in December 2016. The extension provides the fiery 51-year-old a sense of relief, and also plenty of time to help Pittsburgh retool after getting swept by the New York Islanders in the first round of the 2019 playoffs.

Sullivan said he “never really considered” testing free agency next summer.

“I just knew I wanted to be the coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins,” said Sullivan, who is 174-92-34 with Pittsburgh.

The extension is a lucrative vote of confidence from general manager Jim Rutherford, who expressed concern about the need for a culture change inside the dressing room after the Penguins slogged through much of 2018-19 before the earliest playoff exit of the Sidney Crosby era. Rutherford made it a point to place the onus for making the change on the players and not the man who became the first coach in 60 years to win Cups during each of his first two years on the job.

“Mike has done a great job delivering four 100-plus point seasons with our team,” Rutherford said in a statement. “To win back-to-back Stanley Cups in this era speaks volumes of him as a coach.”

Sullivan clashed at times with prolific but temperamental forward Phil Kessel, whom the Penguins traded to Arizona last week for Alex Galchenyuk, among others. Pittsburgh also sent defenseman Olli Maatta to Chicago and signed versatile forward Brandon Tanev to a sixyear deal on the opening day of free agency this week.

“We’re certainly a faster team,” Sullivan said. “I think we’re harder to play against.”

Sullivan has preached about “playing the right way” from the day he took over for Mike Johnston in December 2015, a pet phrase that helped the Penguins create an identity focused on speed and solid defensive play. Though Crosby remains a perennial Hart Trophy candidate and Pittsburgh is still one of the most potent offensive teams in the league, the Penguins have slid defensively since raising the Cup for the fifth time in franchise history in 2017.