HC Mike Sullivan addresses future with Penguins

Josh Yohe of The Athletic recently spoke with Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan, and the long-time Penguins bench boss pledged his loyalty to the franchise, saying that he doesn’t want to coach anywhere else except Pittsburgh. 

Sullivan has seen great success with the Penguins, leading them to back-to-back Stanley Cup Championships in 2016 and 2017. Still, the franchise has fallen on hard times in recent seasons, missing the playoffs in two consecutive years and set to make it a third this season unless they pull off a historic run. 

Despite all of this, Sullivan remains committed to the Penguins. By all accounts, it appears that Pittsburgh remains committed to him, as he has two years left on his contract, and there have been no talks of moving on from the most successful coach in franchise history.

Sullivan took over the Penguins in December 2015 as they spiraled out of control. Despite having a roster full of superstars, the team was out of the playoff picture. Sullivan righted the ship and took the Penguins on two straight playoff runs that resulted in championships. 

However, since defeating the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of the 2018 postseason, Pittsburgh has yet to win a postseason series. They were swept in 2019, eliminated in the play-in series in the pandemic bubble in 2020, and then knocked out of the first round by both New York franchises in 2021 and 2022.

Despite the lack of success over the last eight years, the Penguins have stuck by Sullivan, and he by them. There have been calls for Sullivan to be fired since at least 2021, if not sooner, but none of Jim Rutherford, Ron Hextall, or Kyle Dubas made the move to replace him.

Yohe has long spoken of the bond between Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and Sullivan, and they no doubt want to turn the Penguins around while both men are still in Pittsburgh. The Penguins haven’t called their current situation a rebuild, but it appears like one. 

Pittsburgh has made moves with an eye toward the future, but Dubas has stated that he wants to turn the Penguins back into a winner as quickly as possible. Given that is Pittsburgh’s mandate, it would make sense that a winner like Sullivan would want to stick around with Crosby, and as Sullivan put it in his chat with Yohe, “I have a certain loyalty to all of the people who are a part of it here, and all I want to do is help this team win.”