NYR vs PIT: Mike Sullivan Postgame Media Availability | Oct. 7, 2025

NYR vs PIT: Mike Sullivan Postgame Media Availability | Oct. 7, 2025

I guess just kind of generally speaking, Mike, what do you take away from that one? Well, I think my first observation is we got a long way to go to become the team we want to become. Um, you know, I thought we had moments in the game we where we were, you know, playing the game that we envision that we can play more consistently, but it’s not nearly consistently enough. And, uh, you know, I thought there were moments in the second period we started to play. I thought the first period, you know, for whatever reason, we had hesitation in our game. Some of it, u I think we can iron out. Uh but but certainly we got a ways to go. Mike, how tough was it to give up that goal into the first period? What happened on that? Would you see? Well, it’s just that it’s a breakdown off a faceoff and uh you know, we make three mistakes on the play and usually when you make three mistakes in a row, they end up in the net. You mentioned the hesitation. How much of that do you think is kind of adjusting to new systems and how much is just a general lack of execution? It’s a little bit of both. I’m sure it’s a little bit of both, you know. Um, we’ll just have to keep working at it and and so we’re trying to, you know, we’re trying to simplify the process here, take some of the thinking out of it so that we can we can hopefully overcome any any sort of hesitation. But um I think as we get more familiar more and more of that should um we should see a whole lot less of it. Let’s just say that. How important is team mentality after opening the season with shut out loss? Yeah, listen. I’m not going to overreact to it. It’s one game. We’ve got we got a lot of hockey to play, you know. So, is it disappointing? Yeah. Uh we’re going to see what we can take from it. We’re going to move on. What I will tell you is I think we’ve got a resilient group and you know I think um you know we’re going to go through court you know times in the season where uh you know you don’t you don’t feel good about about what went on and so you know we have high higher expectations. We know that we’ve got to be better. We know that we’re going to go back to work tomorrow and and try to put our best foot forward in Buffalo. Was there uh anyone to you as far as the forward group goes that we stood out? It seemed like there was some hop from Franky’s line a little bit throughout the game. Any positive I guess in that front? Yeah, I think they had moments. You know, I I you know JT’s line had moments in the offensive zone. They had a couple of looks. They don’t score. Uh Troach’s line had the same. I thought, you know, um Sam Carrick’s line, they’re certainly a momentum line. They bring physicality and things like that. They help us, you know, with with that aspect of the game. Um we had moments, it’s just not consistent enough. We we’ve got to we need to be a more consistent threat. Nico mentioned wanting maybe a little more desperation late in the game. Like you felt like you had some zone time, but there wasn’t the push you needed. I I guess how would you assess kind of that level of the desperation? Yeah, I’ve never been a big fan of that word. I I just think it um you know, it implies hopelessness, I guess. You know, urgency might be the a better adjective. um you know and just bringing more urgency to you know to our intentions. You know we had opportunities to get on pucks and anticipate and um you know and we would have liked to have more push back especially on the six on five. We got a chance to keep pucks alive there. We’ve got to we got to dig in. Given your history with him, was it a little surreal to be coaching against Gino and Latang? Yeah, I mean, obviously, uh, you know, it’s different. You know, it’s different. I knew that was going to be the case, but I’m excited about the group we have here in front in front of me and with the Rangers, and I’m looking forward to working with this group. Is there any level of like because of their familiarity with you, like them kind of understanding what you’re trying to accomplish within the system and all that, or is that overblown, you think? probably a better question for them, but I I doubt that’s that’s a factor. You know, I thought their team played well. Just curious about his debut, what you what you thought about him his first NHL game. I thought Labs brought some real good energy. You know, you can see his skating ability. Um, you know, he played with conviction. You know, there’s some areas where, you know, we’d like him to manage the puck, be a little bit more diligent in some of the critical areas of the rink. Um, but that’s a learning process. But I thought for his first NHL game, uh, I thought he played very well for

New York Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan speaks with the media following the team’s loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 7.

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