How much longer will Penguins buck conventional wisdom with Mike Sullivan?

Sullivan seems entrenched in his position, but for how much longer?

The most unique aspect about this Pittsburgh Penguins season isn’t what they have done, it’s about what they chose not to do.

After picking up Erik Karlsson and making some additional and significant personnel changes (an additional new top-four defenseman even after Karlsson! a scoring winger fresh off Stanley Cup glory! a new veteran bottom-six!) most expected Pittsburgh would improve from 2022-23 — when they finished only one point out of the playoffs, missing the post-season for the first time since Sidney Crosby’s rookie year.

That didn’t come to pass, and the team is likely going to finish a handful of points below last year’s results. It’s not that this Penguin club won’t even make the playoffs, they’re not even going to be seriously in the race over the final few games like they were last year.

That’s what happened on the ice in a quick, detached summary — but the continuation of the team’s practice of seeing their coach as still part of the solution and not shuffling him out has been the departure from the norm.

Seven NHL teams have fired their coach during the season so far, and that doesn’t count Columbus axing Mike Babcock in the pre-season. Combined, that’s a quarter of the whole league that has a different bench boss in the last six months alone.

Five more teams made head coaching changes last off-season. Eleven more coaches are finishing up their second season on the job they have now, making for a total of 24 out of the 32 coaches across the league being placed in their position at some point in the last 25 months (February 2022 - current).

One of those places is not Pittsburgh, where Mike Sullivan remains in his role, as he has been since December of 2015. At every turn, GM Kyle Dubas has publicly had Sullivan’s back, saying the Pens were “very fortunate” to have Sullivan in December when they weren’t playing well and reiterating just last week that Sullivan was the right person for the job as the Pens shift from a contender into the rebuilder or whatever it is they are now.

“If you don’t have Sully, then you’re looking for Sully,” Dubas said recently on his Penguins Radio Network show. “If you have it, you should keep it.”

By virtue or not pulling the plug on Sullivan as a jolt and attempt to save this season, the results are clear that the Penguins don’t have an appetite in removing Sullivan. Even when it means staring down the barrel of another playoff-less season. Given the team’s steady decline and lack of results, that is well past becoming an increasingly unpopular stance.

This is leading to two options shaping up for the immediate future.

The first option is that Dubas reassesses his position when sorting out this season and decides to make a coaching change. There’s ample evidence and reason to go this route; the Penguins have looked flat more often than not this season. Their power play being ranked where it currently is ranked (29th at 14.7% while giving up 10 goals against) are fireable offenses all on their own. Failing to make the playoffs two seasons in a row (for a club hoping and expecting to be in the mix) in NHL parlance is another ticket to a coaching change.

That option is feasible, prudent, and the path most organizations would have taken, and even in a more expeditious fashion. Perhaps dress it up as a “mutual parting of ways” to allow Sullivan to head off for a new team and challenge and have a fresh start for the coach and the Penguins. But...(here comes the unpopular turn...) is it the way the Penguins will actually go?

There’s reason to believe they will go with a second option. Sullivan is entrenched in his position and respected from ownership (FSG’s Dave Beeson raves over him) to the GM to the key players. If he has their support and belief he’s the right person for the job moving forward, he’s going to stay in the job.

That doesn’t mean there can’t and won’t be tweaks to address coaching. Associate coach Todd Reirden’s contract expires after this season. It’s difficult to imagine a world where he is welcomed back. Assistant Mike Vellucci’s current term runs aligned with Reirden. Dubas might look for a “best of all worlds” situation to keep a coach he respects but change the dynamic of the staff with new assistants.

Or, all this could be posturing. Dubas spoke highly of Jeff Petry and Mikael Granlund last summer, which is standard and expected of a manager. He’s doing the same now about Sullivan. To a degree the praise in this case is different than typical rote pleasantries, the Pens would have fired Sullivan during this season if they thought it would be best for the team moving forward. They clearly haven’t gotten to that point yet being as that has not come to pass.

Which brings the interesting lingering question in the back of everyone’s minds: when will they get to that point? By and large, NHL coaches do not have long shelf lives or much staying power. The old cliche “it’s easier to change one coach than all the players” usually goes as common knowledge, but the funny thing is, it has not been applicable in Pittsburgh. Sullivan has always been seen as the right person for the job by the people who count, even independent of the results and direction of the team that have gone in the opposite direction.

That’s incredibly rare in the NHL environment. As the Pens trudge along in these late stage Sidney Crosby years looking for what is next, the coaching question will only grow larger. For better or worse, Pittsburgh has departed from typical industry norms by showing faith and giving job stability in a spot that just about every other club treats as disposable. Just how much longer that lasts will be a key storyline for the franchise as they attempt to move forward with whatever Dubas has in mind for next season and beyond.