Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan shouldn't be safe from criticism following the 2022-23 season.

“What have you done for me lately?”

That seems like a good question to begin with when discussing Mike Sullivan and his recent success with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Sure, upon his arrival, Sullivan steadied the ship in what nearly became the darkest season in the Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin/Kris Letang era. Instead, he guided them to a Stanley Cup championship. Then, just for laughs, he decided to do it again the next season. The Penguins became the first organization in the salary cap era to pull off this feat. Sullivan immediately gained top tier-level coaching status for that.

A down season or two certainly would have been forgiven in the immediate aftermath of those Cup wins. Eventually, it was time to rise back up.

Unfortunately, that is something the Penguins never did.

I’d like to preface all of this by saying that the late moves of Jim Rutherford’s tenure coupled with the moves that current general manager Ron Hextall has made haven’t quite helped the Penguins get back to that level.

That doesn’t mean Sullivan should be absolved of blame. Quite the contrary in fact.

A coach's job is to get the most out of the players he’s got at his disposal. You could argue that Sullivan isn’t doing that at the moment.

In one of Hextall’s few good moves in Pittsburgh, he acquired Rickard Rakell. He’s seen the majority of his success with Crosby and Jake Guentzel on Pittsburgh’s top line. However, Sullivan has continued to force Bryan Rust up to that line.

Rust is playing well as of late with four goals in his last three games. He’s a 20-goal scorer for the fourth straight season. That’s great and all but he just hasn’t looked like a $6 million player doing it and is better suited for middle-six duty.

Pittsburgh seems to be at their best with Rakell on line one and Rust playing with Malkin on line two.

Sullivan’s “Just Play” mantra has seemingly grown tired too. To Hextall’s credit, he tried to add some muscle to the team in the offseason but it hasn’t quite worked out as he’d hoped.

Far too often this season, the star players find themselves having to fend for themselves in scrums because the coach’s message deters them from getting into that style of play. That just can’t happen.

The days of the true enforcer are gone but the players shouldn’t be deterred from stepping in and trying to protect anyone on the team, let alone the stars. It makes those guys targets if you aren;t going to allow your players the leeway to step in from time-to-time.

Many Pittsburgh fans will forever be grateful to Sullivan for his leading the Penguins to Cup wins. But that grace period has long disappeared.

The Penguins have been bounced in four straight first-round series and five straight series total. Extenuating circumstances have played a role in all of that but for all the credit Sullivan got for winning those Cups comes equal criticism when the team struggles.

The shelf life for NHL coaches is very short. Sullivan has far exceeded the average tenure for a head coach. He’s the second most-tenured coach in the NHL behind Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper.

Without being in the locker room, it’s hard to tell if the message has gone stale. But at this point, it just seems like the time has come for Mike Sullivan’s seat to get very warm.

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