Mike Sullivan's nearly decade-long tenure running the Pittsburgh Penguins is over.
The team announced Monday it was parting ways with the two-time Stanley Cup-winning coach just over a week after the Penguins missed out on the playoffs for a third straight season.
Sullivan, whose 409 wins with Pittsburgh are a franchise record, led the Penguins to back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 and had two more years left on the contract extension he signed in 2022. The 57-year-old had said recently that he wanted to remain with the club as it tries to retool around future Hall of Famer Sidney Crosby.
General manager Kyle Dubas was a bit more cautious last week, saying he and Sullivan planned to meet to ensure their visions of the team's future remained aligned. Dubas said Monday that the decision to move on wasn't one the club took lightly, but one it felt was necessary.
"As we continue to navigate the Penguins through this transitional period, we felt it was the best course forward for all involved," Dubas said.
The announcement was quite different from the tone Dubas struck last week, when he called Sullivan an "elite-level" coach who appeared to buy into the sizable roster overhaul Dubas is attempting to oversee.
"There's always the point that very few coaches who are in that realm often want to see a team through this," Dubas said a week ago. "But he's been very open about this is what he wants to do so we'll just continue to reaffirm that and as long as he's on that side of it, we will roll with that."
The Penguins hired Sullivan in December 2015 to replace Mike Johnston in search of a spark. Sullivan brought a direct, no-nonsense approach that, combined with a series of shrewd moves by then-GM Jim Rutherford, helped
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