The texts come frequently from Jim Rutherford and Mike Sullivan, always positive, always encouraging, always uplifting.
“They tell me to keep sticking with the process,” Rick Tocchet was saying this past weekend. “It means a lot.”
Tocchet spent glory days with the Penguins, lifting the Stanley Cup as a player in 1992 and then twice more as a Sullivan assistant the past two seasons. Now, he’s the head coach of the young, rebuilding Arizona Coyotes, who take a 2-12-1 record into their game Monday night against the Capitals in Washington. If you know anything about Tocchet and know how competitive he is, if you remember him fighting a couple of times with a broken jaw late in the 1992 season because “I had to be there for my guys,” you know the losing is just about killing him.