What comes next after Mike Sullivan, Pittsburgh Penguins agree to part ways?

It's really the end of an era, in a way very few coaches get to have them.

Mike Sullivan joined the Pittsburgh Penguins midway through the 2015-16 season, immediately won back-to-back Stanley Cups, and seemingly earned the permanent trust of the Pens' leadership group, management team, and most of the local fans and media.

But nothing lasts forever. That leadership group got old, the management team turned over a couple times, and everyone in Western Pennsylvania arrived at the realization that the goal of the franchise needed to change.

everyone knows why this happened, which is why the Penguins and Sullivan mutually agreed to part ways even though the coach was signed until 2027. He probably didn't want to be the coach of a team that was starting a rebuild in earnest, and you can't say they didn't try to stay competitive on the fly. But the roster problems were just too far out of reach, and so here we are.

Sullivan was the second-longest tenured coach in the NHL, trailing only Jon Cooper (by about 20 months), but it's a sign of the times that the Penguins are now the eighth team currently looking for a new coach, and 12 others have hired their current coach since the start of 2024. Twenty teams — almost two-thirds of the league — made a coaching change in the last 16 months. The Penguins doing the same was starting to feel like an inevitability.

Because there's nothing to really dissect here, the focus instead turns to where Sullivan will end up, and who the Penguins will hire next.

The first one might feel obvious already: A week ago, a number of sportsbooks had Sullivan as one of the top candidates to get the now-vacant New York Rangers job, even though Sullivan gave a quote a few days earlier explicitly saying he intended to stay with the Pens through the expiration of his deal. The connections are clear: Sullivan was drafted by the Rangers (though he never played for them), and later was an assistant coach for them from 2009-13. Sullivan was reportedly Chris Drury's first choice to run the team a few years ago, when he hired Gerard Gallant because Sullivan couldn't be pried out of Pittsburgh. No doubt, Sullivan would have been aware of the Rangers' interest this time around as well and, understanding that the Penguins are in a significantly different place four years later, might have felt more comfortable moving on from the job he held for nearly a decade. In addition to the clear focus on Sullivan, the Rangers have a roster that's (theoretically) competitive — at least, far more so than Pittsburgh's — and the financial heft to give Sullivan a monster contract.

It's probably the most obvious pairing there is for Sullivan, but it's certainly not the only one. Chicago and Boston are two more Original Six teams with the money to throw at Sullivan, but Chicago isn't exactly where he would probably want them to be at this point in his career, and with Boston, well, the capital-C Connections are there for you to make. Yes, he was the Bruins coach from 2003-06, not exactly a period of huge success for the club and they fired him for problems that were not his fault. That, however, was almost 20 years ago, and he's very much a Boston Guy who is from Massachusetts, went to Boston University, played for the Bruins, and so on. Moreover, his daughter is married to Charlie McAvoy, so if he's looking to make the team a family business, he could do that, see the grandkid a little more, etc.

Beyond that, there has also been a rumor of interest from the New York Islanders, though they currently do not have a general manager, so that's a whole separate issue.

It feels like it's about 80 percent certain that the Sullivan/Rangers thing is happening, and whatever happens, he won't be out of a job for long. He wrung as much as possible out of the Penguins for basically the entire time he was there, so he's earned the right to collect a huge paycheck wherever he goes.

As for what Pittsburgh GM Kyle Dubas will do to fill this surprising vacancy, well, there are a lot of options. They could go with a veteran NHL coach like David Quinn, Sullivan's BU teammate, who has plenty of experience managing Rangers and Sharks teams that are going through rebuilds. They could go with an even more veteran coach who can also get a lot out of a not-great roster, and bring in John Tortorella. If it weren't for the Flyers vacancy, you could see an obvious connection with ex-Penguin Rick Tocchet. They might also try to go the "no NHL experience" route and target a David Carle (who just removed himself from consideration for the Chicago job despite a reportedly aggressive push from the team) or Pat Ferschweiler, among others.

The other question for the Penguins is, "What about the roster?" Moving on from Sullivan is a clear sign that this is now officially a, like, REBUILD rebuild and not one of those kinda-sorta rebuilds where they vaguely try to compete for the benefit of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. How many of those guys will have the appetite to stick around in the final days of their careers? How many more veterans will get stripped off the roster this summer? Whomever they hire as their next coach will tell us a lot.

Everything comes to an end in this league, but this feels like a particularly surprising parting of the ways that leaves more questions than answers.