Here we are again. For the third time in five years for Chris Drury’s Rangers, we are excited at the hire of a new head coach. This time though it’s not just any head coach, but it’s the coach that Chris Drury has been pining for since he took over Rangers General Manager. The Mike Sullivan hire will not be the smoothest of homecomings for the new coach, as there is still lots of work to do with the roster.
Let’s face it, the New York Rangers have issues and they have quite a bit of them as well. This club saw a dramatic fall from grace as a Stanley Cup contender to a team watching playoffs this year instead of competing in them as they usually do each spring. The Rangers enjoyed historic level organizational success under the first year of Peter Laviolette’s stewardship and then found an equal level of ineptitude in year two under Laviolette that landed Laviolette on the unemployment line and Drury back to the drawing board.
In walks sully with an impeccable resume that gives him instant credibility in the locker room, no matter the state of disarray. Sully chose the Rangers and while it’s one part of the puzzle for Chris Drury, the Mike Sullivan hire is not a magic elixir. This team seemed extremely broken last season and that’s something that just hiring a new head coach won’t fix overnight.
Sullivan has a great reputation for being able to relate to players. We know he can get through to hall of fame level talent, which is something he will have to do here on Broadway. Getting through to the likes of Artemi Panarin and Adam Fox that will get him to elevate their level of play going into the playoffs will be one box that Sullivan will have to check off. But the Mike Sullivan hire didn’t happen just because of two elite talents.
Possibly the biggest challenge for Sullivan will be to elevate the level of play of high ceiling kids, in particular Alexis Lafreniere, who got rewarded with a contract extension and seemingly disappeared afterward, and K’Andre Miller. As Will wrote, the biggest need for Adam Fox will be finding him a competent partner. Miller and Fox were a solid pair to start the season before Miller’s game fell off a cliff. One goal of the Mike Sullivan hire is to help fix Miller’s game, or at least identify if he’s someone that can be salvaged.
In coming back to the Rangers Sullivan will have better goaltending, but that shouldn’t fool him into overly relying on Igor Shesterkin the way prior coaches have. The top goal of the Mike Sullivan hire is getting this team to buy into playing defensively on a nightly basis. This will not be easy as this group has shown itself to be headstrong and try and take the easy way out most nights, relying on skill instead of using their will.
Sullivan has proven to be a great head coach with the Penguins, but like we saw in Pittsburgh it’s not all about the coaches. The players must be willing to execute the coach’s vision and bring the level of compete night in and night out that’s needed to win. The Penguins did just that in Sullivan’s first two years and it yielded them back to back Cups. The Mike Sullivan hire won’t magically fix that compete level for the Rangers.
This Rangers core has shown a willingness to compete for only the first year under three straight head coaches. Can the Mike Sullivan hire break the habit of laziness and complacency that has plagued this club for nearly the last half decade? We can only hope so. We know it’s not just the head coach that had to change, but the players willingness to lay it all on the line to win a Championship needs to change as well.
