PITTSBURGH (AP) – During his first day on the job in mid-December, Mike Sullivan looked around the Pittsburgh Penguins’ dressing room and saw a couple of MVPs, a handful of All-Stars and millionaires in abundance.
He also saw a group languishing in the bottom of the Eastern Conference. No life. No momentum. And – at the time, it seemed – little hope for a quick fix.
“I said, ‘I think we have great players,'” Sullivan said. “Our challenge is to make a great team.”
Five months later, the collection of seemingly mismatched parts Sullivan inherited has evolved into a juggernaut. The Penguins skate. They shoot. They defend. Then they skate and shoot and play defense some more. Sullivan calls it “playing the right way,” a system that when working properly can suffocate opponents the way Pittsburgh did in a 2-1 victory over Tampa Bay in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals on Thursday night.
“They were on top of us pretty good,” Lightning forward Brian Boyle said.