After a short search, the New York Rangers have their next head coach and he is two-time Stanley cup winner Mike Sullivan.
On Friday, Rangers general manager Chris Drury named Mike Sullivan to be the 38th head coach in franchise history after he was let go by the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Sullivan spent the last 10 seasons as head coach of the Penguins and guided them to championships in 2015-16 and 2016-17. He departs Pittsburgh as the franchise leader in regular season games coached, regular season wins, postseason games coached and postseason wins.
Sullivan was an assistant coach with the Rangers on the staff of John Tortorella from 2009-10 to 2012-13, where he coached Drury.
“Mike Sullivan has established himself as one of the premier head coaches in the NHL,” Drury said. “Given his numerous accomplishments throughout his coaching career – including two Stanley Cups and leading Team USA at the international level – Mike brings a championship-level presence behind the bench. I’ve gotten to know Mike very well over the years, including as teammates in the 1997 World Championships, when he coached me as a player in New York and through our shared time working together with USA Hockey. As we began this process and Mike became an available option for us to speak with, it was immediately clear that he was the best coach to lead our team.”
The 57-year-old coach has made many stops along the way that have made him into the coach he is. First, he played 709 games in the NHL from 1992-2002. Secondly, he was a head coach in the AHL with the Providence Bruins in 2002-03 and the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Penguins in 2015-16.
Sullivan began his NHL coaching journey as an assistant with the Boston Bruins in 2002. He then became the head coach of the Bruins and guided them to a first place finish in the Northeast Division in his very first year (2003-04).
Upon being let go by the Bruins in 2006, he became an assistant again with the Tampa Bay Lightning, staying there for two seasons before moving onto the Blueshirts. During this time, the Rangers made the playoffs in three out of the four seasons he was there and progressed as far as the Eastern Conference Final in 2012.
He had a brief stint in Vancouver as an assistant coach before moving on to becoming the development coach for the Chicago Blackhawks during their cup-winning 2014-15 season.
Sullivan took over the Penguins in the middle of the 2015-16 season and guided them to the Stanley Cup. He then repeated the feat in 2016-17, which made him the second coach in NHL history to win the cup in each of his first two seasons with a team.
At the international level, the Marshfield, Massachusetts native was an Assistant Coach for Team USA at the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. He was named head coach of Team USA for the 2022 Winter Olympics but did not coach when it was decided that NHL players would not play. More recently, Sullivan was the head coach of Team USA at the 2025 4 Nations Face-off and has been named head coach of the U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team for the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics.
The experienced NHL head coach will take over a Rangers team that missed the playoffs for the first time in four years. Sullivan was able to find immediate success during his last head coaching stint with the Penguins, but the difference here is that the Penguins team he took over in 2015 was already a playoff contender and the Rangers team he is taking over now is not. We will see if Sullivan can work the same magic with the 2025-26 Rangers in what will be their centennial season.
