I honestly wonder how much was Sullivan being blind to what was happening and how much of it was a power struggle between himself and Hextall. He clearly wants the 2 scoring lines and 2 defensive lines and the players he was getting did not fit that, so maybe he was fine tanking the team to get the type of players he wants. I mean who's ownership going to side with? A 2x Cup champion coach? Or an emergency GM hire?
And now he has those players and he's coached the team to even worse results than last year? Imagine that.
Sullivan's usage has clearly shown he wants the 3rd and 4th lines to play like hard checking defensive shutdown units and somehow also produce unheard of offensive numbers with that usage, it's just not based in any sort of logic at all. Then when he does have options that can help do that, he will always choose the offensively stunted bloke that is average at best on defense because he loves those types.
Rutherford and Hextall failed to make this Sullivan's team after the 2 cups, Dubas still can't do it. You want to blame Hextall? Fine, but then you end up having to blame every GM that has been here with Hextall.
This reminds me of how Burke went to every media outlet to praise Mike Sullivan, I felt that was f***ed up and demoralizing to see given how many issues there are with Sullivan and his coaching, but someone above (FSG) really loves this bloke and he's essentially untouchable because Dubas has now praised Sullivan 3 times to media outlets since he's been hired, sounding a lot like Brian Burke making his rounds to media outlets to keep pumping the fact that Sullivan is great and he's their guy, almost as if they know people want to say something but if they keep pushing that narrative, then no one will think otherwise.
JR got so frustrated with Sullivan's usage of players in wrong roles he panicked and moved Hagelin (Hagelin was someone Sullivan kept forcing with Malkin and it wasn't working as it should, but Hagelin was producing just fine on the 3rd line, but all Sullivan had up his sleeve was praying a version of HBK with Geno would spark something, it didn't, he ended up causing a rift with Malkin and Kessel instead), the team got Tanner Pearson, we were excited, then we saw how Sullivan deployed him and this board turned on Pearson. Mark Jankowski is essentially what Sullivan thinks of Eller, he used him as such, after 1.5 weeks it was clear Mark was not an NHL caliber player to everyone here and to everyone around the league, but 40 games later he finally used someone that kept showing more than Jankowski in each call up and shift, it took him until it was basically too late to figure that out.
His idea of goalie rotation, his ignorance of scouting players and what they're good at is non existent, need I mention he literally came to JR to make a case for Jack Johnson?
Mike Sullivan f***ing sucks, you lot apparently want to blame literally everyone for things Mike Sullivan has exacerbated into shit.
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