The Pittsburgh Penguins won’t be among the few teams looking for a new bench boss this summer. In an article from Wes Crosby of NHL.com, the Penguins will retain head coach Mike Sullivan through the 2025-26 NHL season.
Sullivan’s tenure as the longest-serving coach in franchise history is a story of two distinct coaching periods. He guided Pittsburgh to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2016 and 2017, and into the playoffs for another five years after.
Unfortunately, the dream ended in 2022-23, as the Penguins missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2005-06 season. Throughout his first 507 games behind the bench, he coached Pittsburgh to a 297-156-54 record. Since the start of the 2022-23 campaign, the Penguins have only mustered a 112-99-35 in the last 246 games under Sullivan’s tutelage.
Other notes from the Metropolitan Division:
- In a separate article from Michelle Crechiolo, General Manager Kyle Dubas indicated that netminders Tristan Jarry and Alex Nedeljkovic would compete for the spot they wanted in training camp. Indirectly, that confirms that the Penguins intend to keep both netminders on the team throughout the summer, and that won’t be an area they’ll look to improve externally. Both goalies showed flashes of quality play throughout the 2024-25 season. Still, Pittsburgh finished the year with a 30th-ranked 3.50 GA/G and a 27th-ranked .884 SV%.
- Defenseman Martin Fehérváry isn’t in the lineup for the Washington Capitals in Game 1 of their opening-round matchup against the Montreal Canadiens, as alluded to by Sammi Silber of The Hockey News this morning. Fehérváry continues to recover from an ankle injury suffered in Washington’s penultimate game of the season. Still, it granted an opportunity for Alexander Alexeyev, who’s taken Fehérváry’s spot in the lineup for tonight’s contest.
Pittsburgh doesn’t really have a choice at goalie. Free agency offers nothing, plus you’re paying jarry basically no matter what. They have a couple young guys that could push for a spot soon and you don’t want to block them either. They are kind of forced to ride it out. If they improve next year, it will be because they’ve revamped the defense in front of them.
Revamping the so called defense should be the #1 priority this off season
It’s really the only thing they can do. They have potential high upside young guys up front and goalie they are stuck. Free agency is awful this year, so we need to turn some picks into defensively responsible d men. Nothing flashy.
I hope Dubas gets stuck with Jarry until the end of his contract. What a foolish/desperate signing.
Well I mean it’s not like he had a lot of options at the time, Jarry and Korpisalo were the top free agents, Ottawa were desperate for a goalie too, and the Penguins had nothing in the cupboard to trade with to get someone better. Who was he going to sign instead, Martin Jones? Since Dubas was new to the organization and Jarry had been there a while, it would have made sense to keep Jarry. Dubas can be blamed for some bad decisions, but this doesn’t seem to be one of them.
While I agree with what you said, Dubas is still responsible for the size and term of the contract. Jarry still hadn’t proven he could get it done in the playoffs and also had signs of inconsistency in the regular season—at least that inconsistency was great to above average instead of average to god awful.
A 5 year deal north of 5.5 was insane. I can see being stuck to committing that money or higher but should have kept the term to 3 years. If he had stayed an elite goalie it likely would have cost more to retain now and hindsight is 20/20. Just seemed like they were competing with themselves back then and massively overpaid with term.
Exactly. Dubas painted himself into a corner, then overpaid to get out of that corner, except upon leaving the corner the room was still covered in toxic sharks and asbestos.
2016 & 2017*