Kovacevic: This pupil nothing like his mentor

Mike Sullivan might never win a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh.

He might not make the playoffs next spring.

He's got so much work ahead, even after his first victory finally came in the Penguins' 5-2 flattening of the Blue Jackets Monday night at Consol Energy Center. He needs to set Sidney Crosby straight. He needs to prod the power play back to life. He needs to sift through all those smallish, mobile-ish defensemen. And above all, he needs to keep winning, given his team's precarious place in the Eastern Conference standings.

It won't be easy. And in fairness to the man having conducted three practices, we won't know all that much about him until all of the above has a chance to play out.

Except for one thing we now know with great, gleeful certainty: He's no John Tortorella.



Sure, he spent nearly a decade at Tortorella's side behind the benches of the Lightning, Rangers and Canucks. That's a ton of time together, as well as a ton of mutual trust invested. There's no way such a relationship ran only one way. There's no way there weren't shared philosophies on how hockey should be instructed and how it should be played.

I'm not going to lie: That's the one sliver of skepticism I had with Sullivan's hiring.

Was he Tortorella in disguise?

Would he publicly torment and alienate skilled players, as his mentor has done in Columbus already with Ryan Johansen, who will surely resume being one of the league's bright young lights once Tortorella is done chasing him out of Ohio?

Would he demand that his players lie down in front of 104-mph vulcanized rubber, as he'd done everywhere, even of stars like Marian Gaborik?

Would he treat those around him like dirt on a daily basis, rolling out the wolf's smile at first before unveiling all the usual sarcasm, snideness and classlessness?

Now, after just this one night, I daresay we have the answer.

Because from the Tortorella perspective, this was what we witnessed:



That was Boone Jenner jutting out his knee at Evgeni Malkin, who'd been flying all over the Consol ice to that point. Malkin was felled for three minutes, then missed half of the second period before returning for the third.

And yet, this was Tortorella's response when asked if he thought Jenner might receive supplemental discipline from the league:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WmzXG79CZw

Wow. I mean ... what good does that do?

I'm not even referring to Tortorella here. His reputation is beyond rescue. I'm referring to the NHL allowing teams to attack stars in such a way -- the referees hilariously assessed a mere minor and, as if to add the laugh track, called it tripping rather than kneeing -- as well as the league allowing coaches to publicly denigrate opponents.

No, of course, there's no hard and fast punishment for it. That would be silly. But behind the scenes, as happens in other professional leagues that are more advanced than Earth's earliest plantlife, buttons can be and are pushed to ensure that the sport doesn't damage its own cause.

Nothing of the kind happens in Gary Bettman's NHL.

Which is why this kind of thing does happen:



Double-wow. You won't find butchery like that in a Japanese steakhouse.

That was a double-minor for Columbus' Dalton Prout for that senseless series of crosschecks on Sergei Plotnikov. Four minutes. A trip to the box with 58 seconds left in regulation of a three-goal rout.

Bet everything that neither Jenner nor Prout will be punished by Jurassic Park. Just as the deplorable Brandon Dubinsky, who's taken by storm the mantle of the league's dirtiest player with Matt Cooke now gone from Pittsburgh and everywhere else, won't get anything for this brazen knee attack Saturday on the Flyers' Jakub Voracek:



Dubinsky got nothing for that, and he got one laughable game for cracking his stick over Crosby's neck and back last month in Columbus. It's all coincidence, apparently.

Including the fact that his coach carries reams of history in this context.

Sullivan doesn't.

If Sullivan's got any history, in fact, let it begin not with his ill-fated two-year run with the Bruins as the league's youngest coach a dozen years ago, nor with his loyal tenure under Tortorella, but ... well, how about right now?

The man's been dealt a bad hand, in so many ways, from the schedule that's kept the Penguins from getting precious instructional time, to the general lack of confidence and cohesion left in Mike Johnston's wake, to the injuries and illnesses that have cost him Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, Kris Letang, Beau Bennett and Pascal Dupuis.

He lost his first four games, saw his side outscored, 15-4, and looked no different to the outside world -- if not worse -- than his predecessor.

Well, he isn't Johnston. And he isn't Tortorella.

"This is a coach who knows what he wants and how to get it done," Matt Murray, the Penguins' goaltender who'd just picked up his first NHL victory with 22 saves, was saying. "He's very much aware of who he is."

It's shown. Sullivan has spoken calmly but authoritatively. He's begun to install his system via the breakout, focused on a foundation rather than too much too soon. He's criticized without crushing. He's shouted on the bench and behind closed doors. He's embraced and applauded those who have fared well. I've heard all of this already and so much more.

He's just flooring everyone inside the Penguins in his first few days.

And yet, none of that matters compared to succeeding, and this was the first tangible reward after only scattered signs of progress.

For the first time under any coach this season, Phil Kessel performed like a star. He was loose, creative, having fun -- everything Sullivan has urged of his scorers since arriving -- and he produced the Penguins' second and third goals with no small amount of flair:





Malkin was even better, and that beyond the two goals by bouncing back from his very real knee pain that had him buckling and cringing all through the third.

But the most striking contributions came from the supporting cast, notably Eric Fehr and Nick Bonino, two praiseworthy Jim Rutherford acquisitions over the summer who for some reason had achieved next to nothing through a third of this season.

Fehr dished out the classic long-memory hockey response by fighting Dubinsky early in the second period, a sequence that many teammates -- and Sullivan, too -- credited for the fire that followed with goals by Kessel and Malkin in the next five minutes.

And Bonino surprised nearly everyone by meshing with Kessel almost immediately, including setting up both his goals.

I spoke with both Fehr and Bonino afterward:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77WCHtl44GI

Hey, welcome to Pittsburgh, gentlemen. Try the fries and slaw.

But credit Sullivan, too. Rather than simply cajoling the supporting cast -- and I was told over the weekend that the Penguins were fuming with both Fehr and Bonino, in particular -- he challenged them in the firmest way possible: He summoned possible replacements. Up from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton were players he'd learned to trust, players who were part of that team's rise to the top of the AHL's overall standings, and those players got a chance right away. And lo and behold, Conor Sheary, Kevin Porter and now Scott Wilson have been some of the Penguins' most confident-looking forwards.

After this game, I asked Sullivan a question I genuinely thought he might dodge: Did he see these Wilkes-Barre callups as having an instant impact on the NHL supporting cast?

Man, did he not dodge it.

"Sure I do," he replied as if relishing the chance to address the subject. "When you have young guys challenging for positions on the team and creating that internal push among the group, I think that's a healthy environment. I think it's good for everyone. It's good for the guys who are established here because it's going to push them to be their best. And quite honestly, there are some guys down in Wilkes-Barre who have had pretty good years to this point and are deserving of this opportunity. They've brought us energy. They've brought us enthusiasm. I think that's a great situation for all of us."

One other thing I liked about Sullivan on this night: He showed an edge.

When Prout was sent to the box for the final minute, rather than dispatch the reserves for the meaningless power play with a three-goal lead, he put out Malkin, Kessel, Patric Hornqvist, all the usual first-teamers. You know, to rub it in a little. To score more and more.

To rebuild, one small step at a time, what's always been this franchise's identity.