TARRYTOWN – A 21-year-old Chris Drury was on a bus somewhere in Finland with his mind racing.
He’d accepted an invite to play for Team USA in the 1997 World Championships following his junior season at Boston University, but Drury was questioning whether he belonged. That’s when Mike Sullivan, a seven-year NHL veteran at the time, took the seat next to him.
“I’m scared out of my mind,” Drury recalled. “‘Am I good enough to be here? Should I be here? I’m in college.’ On comes Mike Sullivan and sits down next to me and spends the hour bus ride to the rink with me, talking to me about my life at BU and what my goals are. To me, that’s a little bit of a sense of what I’ve thought about him for a long time.”
With that endearing conversation, a seed was planted that would take nearly three decades to blossom.
That longstanding admiration culminated on May 8 at the MSG Training Center, where Drury, now the all-encompassing team president and general manager of the New York Rangers, introduced Sullivan as the 38th head coach in franchise history.
“The second Mike was available, we quickly and aggressively pursued him,” Drury said. “We’re certainly thrilled that pursuit led us to this moment.”
Selling points
The 1997 bus ride laid the groundwork, but their paths crossed multiple times in the years that followed to solidify Drury’s positive first impression.
Sullivan was an assistant coach for the Rangers from 2009-13, with Drury serving as team captain for the first two seasons before retiring in 2011. They’ve also worked together through leadership positions with USA Hockey, most recently with Sullivan serving as head coach and Drury as assistant GM for the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“It’s already a great relationship,” Drury said. “I think it’s only going to get better each and every day.”
He would have jumped at the opportunity to make this hire in either of his previous two coaching searches, but Sullivan was entrenched in Pittsburgh. He spent 10 seasons with the Penguins, winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017 while becoming the franchise’s all-time coaching wins leader with 409.
But when the two sides finally decided to part ways on April 28, Drury acted swiftly. Within four days, the former U.S. teammates and fellow BU products hammered out a deal that multiple reports suggest will make Sullivan the highest-paid coach in NHL history.
“When I first started to talk to Dru about the prospect of being the head coach of the Rangers, it’s hard not to get excited for a number of reasons,” Sullivan said.
The money part of it went unspoken, but the 57-year-old rattled off selling points that included the aura of the Original Six franchise and his “familiarity” with the roster from coaching in the same division all these years.
He also made sure to mention his ties to Drury and the chance to create a “partnership” in New York.
“I’m really excited about potentially what we could build here,” he said.
Not another retread
The Rangers’ future, which feels especially murky following this season’s top-to-bottom disappointment, will hinge on it.
Sullivan offers cause for optimism because, contrary to the narrative that some of latched onto, he is not just another retread.
His two predecessors − Gerard Gallant and Peter Laviolette − bounced around with several teams (six for Laviolette alone) and had shorter shelf lives at each stop.
Sullivan, on the other hand, stayed in one place for a decade and became one of only 19 coaches in NHL history to win multiple championships. And while he declined to comment on why he and the Penguins finally split up, there’s little doubt that he remained in the good graces of most players and a large segment of the fan base.
“We had some successes there during my time, and I have that experience to draw on – what that looks like – and I hope to bring that to this group here in New York,” Sullivan said. “We also had disappointments. It’s hard to win in this league, and it takes more than talent.”
“As I say to the players all the time, nothing is inevitable in this game,” he added. “You’ve got to go and earn it every day, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The need for a collaborative ‘partnership’
Sullivan’s reputation around the league is that of a steady hand, strong communicator and culture-setter, with the Rangers in desperate need of all three. The initial sentiment is that Drury has made gains in each of those categories with this hire, but the real judgment is still to come.
The task at hand is daunting.
In less than a year, the Blueshirts went from Presidents’ Trophy winners to a playoff-less, drama-filled disaster. Their veteran core fell off a cliff and their young players largely regressed, all while the locker room was fractured by a combination of questionable management tactics and their own pity party.
It’s critical that Drury and Sullivan are on the same page in their efforts to bridge the internal divide and reopen a fleeting window of contention. They face major challenges, beginning with upgrading a roster that’s tight on salary cap space and littered with hard-to-move contracts, and must be in lockstep to successfully navigate them.
“One of the things we talked about was the importance of the relationship between him and I,” Sullivan said. “I can just go back to the experiences that I’ve had over the years, and my experience certainly has told me that that relationship between the head coach and the general manager is really important.”
Drury briefly defended his working relationship with previous coaches, saying “it was never poor,” but the results indicate otherwise.
Tension grew between Drury and Gallant by the end of their second season together, which led to dwindling dialogue and inevitable divorce. And while it never seemed to reach that boiling point with Laviolette, there was a clear disconnect in how players drafted and acquired by Drury were being deployed.
Sullivan’s contract and résumé should earn him more influence than his predecessors. The personnel must fit the identity he wants to establish, with any acquisitions brought in to fill specific roles outlined by the new bench boss.
“At the end of the day, (the lineup) is the head coach’s responsibility, and I certainly have no intention of sticking my nose in that,” Drury said. “But with that said, there’s constant communication. There’s constant feedback back and forth. There are no transactions or trades or call-ups that management does without speaking with the head coach – and that’s not going to change here. In the other sense of that, I’m sure Mike’s going to come to me and say, ‘What do you think about this? I’m thinking about this with the lineup. I’m thinking about that with the power play.’”
Sullivan will also be charged with facilitating better communication and improving the working environment within the Rangers’ facilities.
Players grew increasingly frustrated with management last season, with that friction bleeding onto the ice. Sullivan should command respect from both sides and must find ways to make the organization feel more cohesive.
“I can’t really comment on what’s evolved here in the past,” Sullivan said. “All I can speak to, I guess, is what potentially that we could build here moving forward. My intention is to bring the experiences that I’ve learned through my time coaching in the NHL and some of the insights that I’ve gained over the years.”
It’s incumbent on Drury to tap into that.
This may be his last chance to get this right. His roster-building track record is underwhelming and both of his previous coaching choices flamed out quickly. It’s hard to imagine he’ll get to oversee a fourth coaching search, at least not any time soon.
It’s sink-or-swim time with Sullivan, who stressed the need to “share the same vision and work towards the same goals.”
Drury has tried running the team as an autocracy, but a collaborate relationship with the coach he’s coveted for years − as many as 28, you could say − is the only path forward.
“It’s going to be a great partnership in the true sense of the word,” Drury said.
Vincent Z. Mercogliano is the New York Rangers beat reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Read more of his work at lohud.com/sports/rangers/ and follow him on Twitter @vzmercogliano.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mike Sullivan, Chris Drury must form ‘partnership’ to fix NY Rangers