Kingerski: Credit Dubas, Reasons Said & Unsaid Why Sullivan Had to Go

CRANBERRY — It was time. There were no great inflection points, acrimony, or, in the end, much disagreement. Mike Sullivan is no longer the Pittsburgh Penguins’ head coach, and hours after announcing the decision, the president of hockey operations/general manager, Kyle Dubas, answered the questions with a surprising candor.

Dubas also made the right call. Sullivan’s time in Pittsburgh had indeed expired, though for many of us, the actual follow-through was surprising because it seemed the deeply entrenched Sullivan would be granted the chance to rebuild with the team.

Read More: Dubas: ‘Time for a Change’; New Coach Expected Around Late June

Instead, Dubas wisely and boldly will reach for a new voice.

The GM declined to speak for Sullivan, just as he declined to speak for Sidney Crosby, whom he apprised of the situation over the last couple of days. But Dubas didn’t leave any doubt that he had fully contemplated the decision, and had been stewing on the possibility since the regular season.

Dubas flew to Boston to discuss the situation with Sullivan, and that was that.

“I think what I’ve learned in two years is that there’s a reason why it is essentially impossible and has not been done where a coach has led the team to winning and through a transition and all the way back,” Dubas said.

There were swirling reports and refuting reports, but the immutable fact was that after months of defending his head coach, Dubas saw the same negatives that we’d all seen and assigned blame beyond the roster. And surely Sullivan was in no position to make any demands, requests, or even asks.

The timing was right.

For his part, Dubas flatly denied reports that Sullivan made demands that he was unwilling to meet.

“There were no demands last Tuesday, there were no demands yesterday, and there were no demands in the period in between,” Dubas asserted. “There have never been any demands from Mike or … non-negotiables.”

The team’s press release termed the separation as a mutual parting of the ways. However, Dubas clearly took responsibility for the decision and severed the previously impenetrable relationship between Sullivan, the team, and the organization.

In the end, fans were correct on several issues, and Dubas was of the same mind. The coach and team were better than they showed, or as Dubas said, “sometimes, the class needs a new professor, and sometimes the professor needs a new class.”

Dubas didn’t offer specifics on the later estimation, but Sullivan’s anger toward losing every so slightly crept into his public comments, where he often prefaced his evaluations of several players with the negatives before complimenting their work ethic to fix their flaws. It was a stark departure from the past, in which every player was first given the carrot, then offered a little stick.

For Sullivan, who carefully speaks almost like a high-ranking diplomat, such things had meaning.

And take it from someone who bore the brunt of a few terse exchanges, even if the words didn’t convey anger, the tones and the eyes conveyed it intensely.

Dubas Left Unsaid

The biggest schism that was emerging beyond a sloppy team was Sullivan’s religious effort to prioritize winning. Ice time was given in the micro, based on the game, while Dubas has been working on the macro. The coach could have benefited the team long term by giving some of Dubas’s projects and the team’s prospects a better opportunity.

Remember Sullivan swatting me away when I asked if the play of Rutger McGroarty and Ville Koivunen gave him optimism for the future?

“That’s you guys. That’s for the media to talk about,” Sullivan shot back.

That moment was the first time I realized that Sullivan wasn’t the right guy for what comes next. That was an opportunity to speak to the grand plan and the positives that were within the Penguins’ grasp.

Nah, Sullivan wanted to talk about beating the Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, and St. Louis Blues.

To that desire, Sullivan essentially iced Vladislav Kolyachonok in the press box for most of the young defenseman’s time with the organization. While Kolyachonok was not going to be a difference maker, he surely was equal to the busted blue line blues tune that the team sang for months. He deserved better.

Also, Owen Pickering was sent back to the AHL in January despite a largely successful NHL stint. Even though Sullivan explained the Pickering decision (and it was ultimately Dubas’s call), and it made sense in a short-term context, it was not in keeping with the Penguins’ direction.

But that obviously wasn’t the battle Dubas wanted to pick.

Pickering was significantly better than Ryan Graves and offered different dimensions in the defensive zone than any other Penguins defender, but he was beginning to have a bit of a slump.

The right coach would have picked up Pickering, maybe pumping up his ego just a bit, and perhaps even shielded him from some of the guff that teammates dished out for his boyish ways, just as former coach Eddie Olczyk once did for Sidney Crosby.

After witnessing the explosion of energy and enthusiasm and fundamentally sound play when McGroarty and Koivunen were recalled from the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, it is a perfectly legitimate ponderance to wonder why it wasn’t done a few weeks sooner (months earlier would have been too soon. Recall our conversation with McGroarty in which he said early in the season he was just surviving, not thriving at the NHL level).

Nay, Dubas didn’t reference such things, but those directives surely had to make him question if Sullivan was the right guy.

Dubas has always publicly maintained a safe distance from coaching decisions. To be clear, Dubas returned to the same answers when discussing the decision. He made the call on Sullivan, and watching the pathetic performances by the NHL club was the seed that blossomed. Those performances mounted over the last two seasons would have been more than enough to get most coaches called to the principal’s office.

In speaking of a new coach, Dubas might as well have been saying what he didn’t get from the old one.

“I think with the right personnel, the style of play has proven to be very effective here. Obviously, there are two banners that hang there because of the way that Sully coaches, not only with the style,” said Dubas. “In hockey, especially, there’s the style that the team executes. There’s getting the most out of the players to execute it. There’s the consistency that you’re able to instill.”

Over the last 24 months, the Penguins would be 0-for-3 on that checklist.

Yet it surely seemed Sullivan was safe. As it turns out, the eyes above saw the same things that frustrated and angered fans.

The fit between coach and team was now a bad one. While Sullivan brusquely affirmed his desire to remain, his actions also prioritized winning games. Yet the team’s lack of commitment to the game, including in some big moments, made even that goal impossible.

It’s to Dubas’s credit that he made the decision, not allowing the emperor to stay so long as to have no clothes. A year too early is better than a year too late.

And then there were only four remaining with two Stanley Cup rings. This is exclusively Dubas’s ship to steer now, and based on his courage to deal with Jake Guentzel last season, followed by the hefty decision to untether Sullivan, he doesn’t lack the courage to make expensive or hard decisions.

Perhaps we should view Erik Karlsson’s future in a different light, too.