PHILADELPHIA – When Mike Sullivan accepted the Rangers head coaching job, a possible “retool” was not at the forefront of his mind.
Coming from a Penguins team that was essentially at the start of a rebuild, Sullivan was naturally expecting to compete right away in New York.
That was put on hold Friday afternoon, when Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury penned a letter to disappointed fans and declared significant changes were coming.
There were numerous reports that differing opinions on Pittsburgh’s timeline back to success led to Sullivan’s departure, but now he is back in a similar situation.
“I understand the process. I understand the process,” Sullivan said Saturday morning before the Rangers took on the Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
“What I’ll tell you is that I’m all in on trying to help this organization move forward. Chris [Drury] and I have talked throughout this whole process. We have a very transparent relationship. And I’m going to do everything in my power to try to help this team move forward. I’m going to control what I can and try to be the very best coach that I can be for this organization.”
The Rangers are expected to be active on the trade market in the coming weeks.
Players who “have brought us and our fans great moments over the years,” like Artemi Panarin, are expected to be on the move before the Olympic break and March 6 trade deadline.
It could make for a difficult situation to navigate for Sullivan, who will have to manage assets for anticipated business.
Asked if this is a situation where he has to consider holding players out of the lineup to protect against injury, Sullivan was matter of fact in his response.
“We’re going to try to win every game,” he said. “These guys are competitive guys. We’re going to try to win every game in front of us. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Sullivan shot down the notion that the Rangers business becoming public makes the job more challenging from a coach.
Noting that the Rangers have been engulfed in noise for quite some time now, Sullivan said his team needs to dig in and put their best game on the ice.
“It’s probably a fairly common sensical statement to suggest that when you don’t meet expectations, or you don’t have success, the change is inevitable in pro sports,” Sullivan said of the locker room’s reaction to Drury’s announcement. “Is that a fair statement? So, I think our team is well aware of that, and that’s, to a certain extent, what we all sign up for. I don’t know that an acknowledgement of this is something that the players haven’t already thought about or considered as we go through this process. We’re all human beings. We all understand the business, and we all understand the game.
“And so, we’re going to do our very best to control what we can. We’re going to bring a good attitude. We’re going to try to bring exceptional effort every night. We’re going to try to play a collective effort game, and we’ll see where that takes us.”