Older and wiser and champs again

After the Penguins’ beat the Detroit Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup in 2009, it seemed as if those kinds of celebrations would be common occurrences for the talented young team.

Injuries and disappointment followed in the years to come. Captain Sidney Crosby sustained multiple concussions that made him a spectator for the better part of two seasons, and the Penguins made just one trip to the Eastern Conference final, where they were swept by the Boston Bruins in 2013.

Dan Bylsma, the midseason replacement who led the Penguins to a Cup win in 2009, was fired in 2014, and his replacement, Mike Johnston, was fired in December 2015.

But when the Penguins named Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coach Mike Sullivan as Johnston’s replacement, Sullivan thought the team still was capable of hoisting the Stanley Cup that season.

“I certainly thought it was a possibility,” Sullivan said. “That’s everybody’s hope when they go into a new challenge in the NHL. When I first took this team over, I looked around the room, and I saw the talent that we had on the team. And I said that to our players in the very first meeting we had with them.”

Sullivan said the challenge was to take a roster full of talented individuals and turn it into a team — because it’s easier for a team to win a Cup than a spattering of isolated stars. The coach lost his first four games in command but sent the Penguins on an upward trajectory after that.

That had been Johnston’s failure at the start of the 2015-16 campaign that saw the Penguins on a 15-10-3 start, ninth in the Eastern Conference and out of playoff contention — not harnessing the scoring power of players such as Crosby and blockbuster offseason addition winger Phil Kessel.

Remedying this problem was more of a “mindset change” than any great strategic overhaul. When the Penguins failed to meet expectations early in the season and endured a coaching change, that made it hard for these “proud” players to come to the rink every day, Sullivan said. He tried to “free [the] players up so they could act on their instincts and be at their best” by embracing the process, focusing on hockey and not letting outside circumstances or criticism overwhelm them.

“When we made the coaching change, it was definitely something that kind of sparked our team,” winger Bryan Rust said. “Coach Sullivan brought in his passion, which kind of was contagious throughout the locker room. Our team’s got a lot of really good players, and we’ve got a lot of skill. It was just the mindset and the workmen mentality that he kind of came in and instilled in everyone.”

Sparking the veterans was only part of the equation for the Penguins’ post-Johnston success. Sullivan also had to bridge the gap from those tenured players to the newcomers. Rust, along with fellow wingers Conor Sheary and Tom Kuhnhackl as well as goalie Matt Murray, started the season with Sullivan in the AHL and ended it as a key part in the Stanley Cup run.

The three wingers contributed 24 points to the playoffs while Murray, who emerged as the starter after concussions limited longtime netminder Marc-Andre Fleury, tallied a 2.08 goals against average and .923 save percentage in 21 starts. And those experienced guys such as Kessel, Crosby and center Evgeni Malkin nabbed 22, 19 and 18 points, respectively.

“I think it helped that we had guys who were older and who had won it before and who had been through it all because they helped out us younger guys or guys who haven’t won it before,” Rust said. “So I think there was a good mix of youthful enthusiasm and then veteran leadership.”

Sullivan said the fact that so many people added to the Penguins’ success is one of the best aspects of the team. He couldn’t pick out even one player on the roster who didn’t have a significant contribution on the road to winning the Stanley Cup in what the coach called a “collaborative effort from top to bottom.”