Once upon a time, in an NHL far removed from today, Mike Sullivan guided our Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups. In the process revolutionizing the way the game was played.
Speed, and lots of it, was suddenly of the essence, along with a kamikaze forecheck and stingy puck possession. Teams that relied too heavily on brawn were simply skated into the ice.
“It’s reading and reacting and understanding that the faster you can be, the faster you can do things, it puts your teammates in a better situation when they get the puck,” explained then-Pens forward Chris Kunitz. “Gives them more time to make the next play, catch someone else out of position.”
“Organized chaos,” Matt Larkin of The Hockey News described it.
Fast forward six years. The organized part seems to have vanished. Only the chaos remains.
It’s almost painful to watch the Pens try to play Sullivan’s favored brand of hockey these days. Our forwards bounce around the offensive zone like so many ping-pong balls trapped inside a lottery machine, only occasionally finding their way up the winning tube…or more appropriately…to the net.
Yet we keep trying at our coach’s instance. Indeed, Sullivan went to great lengths earlier this summer to explain our (or rather his) need to play to our identity while making a very public plea for more speed.
He even has his new boss drinking the Kool-Aid. Kyle Dubas spent the better part of the summer bolstering the lineup with Sully-type players. Vinnie Hinostroza, Andreas Johnsson, Rem Pitlick, Matt Nieto, Austin Wagner, Colin White and now recent waiver pickup Jansen Harkins.
During a recent interview with Dave Molinari of Pittsburgh Hockey Now, Sullivan provided an impromptu checklist of the qualities he seeks.
“We’re looking for guys who can bring us conscientious play. Who can make sure they make good decisions with the puck. Who can be strong on the (boards). Who make us hard to play against. Who can be good on the forecheck. They’re strong in the puck-pursuit game and they’re hard on our opponent’s defensemen.”
All good stuff. Except there seems to be a disconnect between the type of player our coach says he wants and the type of player he actually employs. Due, at least in part, to the limits he places on roster construction.
No big personalities. No one who would compete with his voice or detract from his message in the locker room.
As Tupac once rapped, “All Eyez on Me.”
And for goodness sake, no players who employ an overtly physical style.
No wonder the team displays zero intensity. There’s no one to light a fire or provide a spark, like the departed Jason Zucker did last season. Who, for the record, was replaced by the more sedate Reilly Smith.
Frankly, I’m shocked by how sluggish and uninspired our A-team has looked through two preseason games. Especially when you consider how many guys are fighting for jobs. You’d think the competition alone would stoke our competitive fires. Yet nothing seems to be further from the truth. Most the newcomers seem to be skating on eggshells. Or more appropriately, thin ice.
Part of the problem? We’re an aging team trying to play a young man’s style. Perhaps Evgeni Malkin said it best following our season-ending loss to the Blue Jackets last spring.
“I think we tried so hard. We tried everything. I try to play hard every game, you know. But the league is young. They play so hard. It’s a new generation. It’s coming.”
In the meantime, the rest of the league has long since adapted to the innovations Sullivan wrought and have added new wrinkles, most notably blending a degree of gristle and aggression with skill and speed. Yet Sully stubbornly sticks to his old ways. Trying to get his charges to embrace a style they’re no longer capable of playing. At least not effectively.
A more controlled, structured style might be a better fit for the talent on hand, especially with so many stars approaching the twilight of their respective careers. But Sully, who otherwise has many fine qualities as a coach, won’t adjust.
It’ll be his downfall. Ours too.
Back in the Saddle
The Penguins reversed engines and recalled four players from the Baby Pens yesterday, including three who were only recently waived. Among those granted a reprieve? Forwards Avery Hayes and the aforementioned Pitlick, along with defensemen Xavier Ouellet and Ty Smith.
Pierre-Olivier Joseph is out day-to-day with an injury sustained against the Senators.
In the good news department, Jake Guentzel was a full participant in yesterday’s practice. Fueling hopes that he might be ready for action sooner than anticipated. Our struggling offense, not to mention our ailing power play, could sure use the help.
I think the last comment actually described Johnston, the coach Sullivan replaced. We were in a defensive shell with Johnston that didn’t work. It wasn’t taking advantage of skill and speed the Penguins had. Sullivan turned that all around and the rest is history. When Ottawa played us in the Conference finals and tried to slow us down and it worked to some extent, Sullivan revised the system to work around Ottawa’s system and we beat them to make it to the finals. I think Mike Sullivan is a great coach. Our team has been competitive until last year when our former GM really messed up the team with some of his acquisitions. In previous years, we were let down by goaltending and that is still our current weakness.
Hello Penguin’s Steve and welcome to PenguinPoop.
You’re certainly not alone in your assertion that Mike Sullivan’s a great coach. Many others, including our ownership, feel the same way. And I’ll agree that during the Cup years…and perhaps a season beyond…he was a great coach and just what the doctor ordered.
I don’t know if he qualifies as great any more. For starters, he hasn’t won a playoff series since 2018. Since that time our postseason record is 8-19. Although you can certainly argue mitigating circumstances (a tired team in ’18, Tristan Jarry’s meltdown in ’21) he was outcoached by Barry Trotz on three separate occasions. Our 2019-20 team, built in Sullivan’s small and speedy image, was muscled out of the postseason by the 24th seed Canadiens.
You specifically mentioned his ability to adjust. In ’22 we held a 3-1 series lead over the Rangers and had them on the ropes. With Louis Domingue in net, we obviously needed to tighten things up. Sullivan went against his grain and used a trap to close out Game 4…then never went back to it as we frittered away the series.
But my biggest rub against Sullivan are the restrictions he places on roster construction. For all his rhetoric about wanting to be hard to play against, his teams rarely are. Quite the opposite, in fact. That’s because he filters out any player with a genuine physical bent.
To Sully, Zach Aston-Reese is “heavy.” In reality, he’s a middleweight.
Every team that’s won the Cup since our Pens (including the Avs) have blended real physicality with skill. The Golden Knights won the Cup last season with grinders like William Carrier and Keegan Kolesar on the fourth line and Brayden McNabb and Nicolas Hague anchoring the defense. With the possible exception of Hague, none of these guys would be welcome on Sully’s Pens.
His aversion to physical players is one of the reasons we can’t win a single playoff round, let alone the four required to win a Cup.
I’ll close by circling back to an observation you made. Mike Johnston, indeed, had us playing a buttoned-down style that wasn’t working when Sullivan first took over. To his credit, Sully removed the restraining bolts and had the team play on its toes and to its strengths.
But that was six years ago. Sid and Geno and Tanger, not to mention Phil Kessel, were all in their late 20s and squarely in their primes. While they’re still great players, especially considering their collective age, it’s safe to say they’ve lost a step.
Playing a more controlled style at this stage might enable them to play to their strengths while exploiting openings on the counterattack, much like the Islanders do so successfully against us, rather than trying to outscramble and outhustle foes. A stretch for guys in their mid-to-late 30s.
Nothing will ever detract from Sullivan guiding us to those back-to-back Cups. And there’s no denying he was a huge driving force, especially with the changes he made. But that was then and this is now. The game and our opponents have evolved. I’m not sure Sullivan has.
Still a good coach…yes. But a great one at this stage? I’m not so sure.
Rick
Hey Rick
Short answer is NO !! I was always taught you Coach the team you have not the team you want…
Cheers
Jim
Hey Jim,
100% agree, to be a good coach, you coach he team you have. You put your players in positions to succeed not fail.
Moreover, as I point out below, Sully hockey doesn’t even work when he has the players he wants. Sully’s speed game is a myth. The team only played with speed when Sullivan didn’t have time to install a system and had to use the KISS principal. Unfortunately, Sullivan speed game has become accepted much like “Columbus discovered America”. Or “Washington chopped down a Cherry Tree”. It is like the Music industry paying of Disc Jockeys to saturate the airwaves with the song they want people to believe they like; the old saying lie loud enough and long enough and people will believe it.
Hey Rick,
I feel like Mugatu again repeating this, no, no, no, the Sullivan plan never, never, never worked!!!!
Look at the numbers.
Sullivan got here in the middle of the season in 2015-2016. He didn’t have time to install a system. All he could do was say go out there and do what you do best. He simplified the game down and told Hagelin, just beat everyone to the puck and bump it to bones; nothing complicated, no real reads, just play on instinct. The Pens were 2nd in the league on CORSI that inaugural regular season, playing with speed, because they weren’t thinking, just playing.
Then came the post season and Sullivan was able to start installing his system, combined with playoff refereeing and the Pens, even though they won the Cup, started to slow down. There CORSI dropped to 51.63, only good for 7 out of 16 playoff teams. I remember that San Jose Series and those big and old men, Thorton and crew gave pretty much as good as they got.
It isn’t the age or size of the players that makes the speed.
Cup year II, with an entire training camp and half a year to start molding the team into his image, the team CORSI dropped to 50.14. The Playoffs showed even a greater decline in CORSI, 46.13 – 15th out of 16 playoff teams. If not for MAF standing on his head to stave off the Caps, Sully doesn’t get out of the Div Finals. If not for Murray and his 3 SOs the team doesn’t get their back-to-back Cups.
Sully may not have been as expendable as Kevin Porter on those Cup teams, but his system may have been. Those Cups were earned by the players, not the Coach.
Unfortunately, way, way, way too many fans and Team executives have/still won’t look deep enough into what happened those Cup years and give far to much cred to an undeserving (at least in terms of quantity) Coach.
No, Sullivan hockey only makes winning harder, and harder on its players to try and win.
The identity of Sully hockey is slow your own players down overly complicate, elaborate algorithms, forcing the skaters to sort through read after read so that opponents get to the puck first. The identity of Sully hockey is enlist a team of small players that can’t take the hits their coach is asking them to take and then be surprised by the number of injuries and players pulling up and allowing the opponent to get to the puck first rather than take the hit or stay on the perimeter of the offensive zone rather than get their head handed to them in the prime scoring areas. The identity of Sully hockey is have the defense play offense and the offense play defense, so that neither forward nor D are put in a position to succeed and are forced to skate twice as much as their opponents in a game, and then be surprised when they lose races or battles for the puck. The identity of Sully hockey is dig up fossils to play a kids game. The identity of Sully hockey is not speed, it is blaming the players who are executing the game plan to a Tee rather than blame the game plan.