Jon Cooper explains why Rangers’ Mike Sullivan has ‘sign of a good coach

   

When it comes to being a good coach in the NHL, it takes one to know one. And clearly New York Rangers coach Mike Sullivan has a fan in fellow-two-time Stanley Cup winner Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Jon Cooper explains why Rangers' Mike Sullivan has 'sign of a good coach':  report - Yahoo Sports

Sullivan and Cooper are two of the most successful coaches of their era. Sullivan won the Stanley Cup in consecutive years with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017; and Cooper did the same with the Lightning in 2020 and 2021. Cooper has the best winning percentage of any current coach in the NHL (.595) and his 572 wins are 25th all-time in NHL history. Sullivan, hired by the Rangers two weeks ago, is not far behind Cooper; He has a .522 win percentage and is 32nd all-time with 479 victories.

In 2016, Sullivan led the Penguins past Cooper and the Lightning in seven games during the Eastern Conference Final, en-route to a Stanley Cup championship.

Cooper got Sullivan back this past February, when he guided Canada past Sullivan’s United States-coached team in the championship game at the 4 Nations Face-Off.

So, yeah, these guys know each other pretty well.

 

But, what makes Sullivan such a top coach in Cooper’s opinion?

“The sign of a good coach, to me, is when the star players are playing super hard,” Cooper told The Athletic. “’Sully’ got his star players in Pittsburgh to play hard, even years into his time there. For me, that’s a great sign. The other sign is: Does the team look disorganized at all? Do they look like they’ve gotten the message from the coach on how to play? And his teams have always looked like they knew what was going on.