TAMPA — When Mike Sullivan was named head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins last December, his initial conversations with Sidney Crosby went far past the get-to-know-you-better kind of chats.
Crosby hadn’t been playing well, he knew as much, and Sullivan, who had been coaching the Penguins’ farm club when Mike Johnston was fired, went right to the point with the superstar.
“My experience of coaching against him for all those years (with various teams), was that when Sid is at his best, he was emotionally engaged,” Sullivan said on Tuesday.
“Some of the early conversations I had with Sid when I took the team over was to try to light a fire in his belly.