The Pittsburgh Penguins will have a new man behind their bench when they visit TD Garden this week.
The Penguins, losers of six of their last nine games, fired head coach Mike Johnston and assistant Gary Agnew on Saturday and announced the hiring of Mike Sullivan, who will make the jump from Pittsburgh’s AHL affiliate to take over for Johnston.
“I felt it was time for a coaching change because our team has underachieved,” general manager Jim Rutherford said in a statement. “Our expectations are much higher with this group of players.
“Mike Sullivan has been a head coach and an assistant coach in the NHL and we’ve been very fortunate to have him with our AHL club this season. He’s done an outstanding job in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and he’s ready to step in.”
Sullivan, who was in his first season as head coach of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, has NHL head-coaching experience, most recently in an interim role with the Vancouver Canucks in 2013-14. The 47-year-old former forward also has deep Boston ties, having grown up in Marshfield, Mass., played his college hockey at Boston University and gone up to both play for and coach the Bruins.
Sullivan spent one of his 11 NHL seasons in Boston, tallying five goals and 13 assists in 1997-98, and served as the Bruins’ head coach from 2003 to 2006. The B’s won 41 games and finished first in the Northeast Division in his first season behind the bench, but the team slumped following the NHL lockout, plummeting to fifth in the division and missing the playoffs in 2005-06.
The Bruins fired Sullivan the following summer. He went on to work as an assistant with the Tampa Bay Lightning, New York Rangers and Canucks, as well as a player development coach in the Chicago Blackhawks organization before taking over Pittsburgh’s minor league squad this past June.
The Penguins, who play the Bruins in a home-and-home this Wednesday and Friday, entered Saturday with a 15-10-3 record, good for fifth in the Metropolitan Division. They also ranked 27th in the NHL in scoring and 26th in power-play percentage despite boasting the likes of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel.
Thumbnail photo via Bruce Fedyck/USA TODAY Sports Images
