{"id":412963,"date":"2026-01-17T18:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/412963\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T18:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T18:07:14","slug":"how-mike-sullivan-reacted-to-letter-2-0-as-rangers-struggle-in-first-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/412963\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mike Sullivan reacted to Letter 2.0 as Rangers struggle in first season"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA \u2013 When Mike Sullivan accepted the Rangers head coaching job, a possible \u201cretool\u201d was not at the forefront of his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coming from a Penguins team that was essentially at the start of a rebuild, Sullivan was naturally expecting to compete right away in New York.<\/p>\n

That was put on hold Friday afternoon, when Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury penned a letter to disappointed fans<\/a> and declared significant changes were coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There were numerous reports that differing opinions on Pittsburgh\u2019s timeline back to success led to Sullivan\u2019s departure, but now he is back in a similar situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand the process. I understand the process,\u201d Sullivan said Saturday morning before the Rangers took on the Flyers at Xfinity Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ll tell you is that I\u2019m all in on trying to help this organization move forward. Chris [Drury] and I have talked throughout this whole process. We have a very transparent relationship. And I\u2019m going to do everything in my power to try to help this team move forward. I\u2019m going to control what I can and try to be the very best coach that I can be for this organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NewMike Sullivan\u2019s Rangers are struggling in his first year. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Rangers are expected to be active on the trade market in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Players who \u201chave brought us and our fans great moments over the years,\u201d like Artemi Panarin<\/a>, are expected to be on the move before the Olympic break and March 6 trade deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It could make for a difficult situation to navigate for Sullivan, who will have to manage assets for anticipated business.<\/p>\n

Asked if this is a situation where he has to consider holding players out of the lineup to protect against injury, Sullivan was matter of fact in his response.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try to win every game,\u201d he said. \u201cThese guys are competitive guys. We\u2019re going to try to win every game in front of us. That\u2019s just the way it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NewChris Drury penned another letter to fans. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

Sullivan shot down the notion that the Rangers business becoming public makes the job more challenging from a coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Noting that the Rangers have been engulfed in noise for quite some time now, Sullivan said his team needs to dig in and put their best game on the ice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably a fairly common sensical statement to suggest that when you don\u2019t meet expectations, or you don\u2019t have success, the change is inevitable in pro sports,\u201d Sullivan said of the locker room\u2019s reaction to Drury\u2019s announcement. \u201cIs that a fair statement? So, I think our team is well aware of that, and that\u2019s, to a certain extent, what we all sign up for. I don\u2019t know that an acknowledgement of this is something that the players haven\u2019t already thought about or considered as we go through this process. We\u2019re all human beings. We all understand the business, and we all understand the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so, we\u2019re going to do our very best to control what we can. We\u2019re going to bring a good attitude. We\u2019re going to try to bring exceptional effort every night. We\u2019re going to try to play a collective effort game, and we\u2019ll see where that takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2013 When Mike Sullivan accepted the Rangers head coaching job, a possible \u201cretool\u201d was not at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[337,5,2310,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-412963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-chris-drury","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-mike-sullivan-nhl","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-rangers","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkrangers","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-rangers","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115911776430120617","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}