Rangers, Penguins veering down drastically different paths after coach swap
PITTSBURGH — There is something perversely ironic about the current state of the Rangers and Penguins, after the two clubs swapped coaches this past summer.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mollie Walker about the inside buzz on the Rangers.
Serving as an assistant under Peter Laviolette in New York the previous two seasons, Dan Muse was charged with getting an older Penguins team back on track while general manager Kyle Dubas retools a roster that is bracing for life after the Big Three of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang.Muse and the Penguins were sitting in second place in the Metropolitan Division entering Saturday’s matchup with the Rangers.The end of Pittsburgh’s three-season playoff drought is well within reach.What a way to begin an NHL head coaching career.Mike Sullivan, who won two Stanley Cups and spent the past decade with the Penguins, was brought to New York to salvage the championship window.
A disagreement on the timeline back to success reportedly led to Sullivan’s departure from Pittsburgh, so joining a Rangers team that expected to be competitive was a preferable landing spot.On the day the Penguins were celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2016 Stanley Cup win, however, Sullivan came into PPG Paints Arena with the Rangers sitting in dead last in the Eastern Conference.Just two weeks prior, the club announced its intentions to retool and decided not to extend star wing Artemi Panarin.The start of his Rangers tenure certainly hasn’t gone the way he imagined, but the progress his former team has made hasn’t come as a shock.“It doesn’t surprise me, because I think the core guys that have been here as long as they have, they’re a unique group,” Sullivan said Saturday, before the Rangers lost, 6-5, to the Penguins.“And although they are aging, there’s still elite-level play in their game.
It’s driven by Sid, their captain.Does it surprise me? N...