Chris Drury, Mike Sullivan and a decades-old bus ride lead to Rangers pairing
New York Rangers President and GM Chris Drury, left, introduces new Rangers coach Mike Sullivan on Thursday. Credit: Ed Quinn
GREENBURGH — Chris Drury was a 20-year-old junior at Boston University. Mike Sullivan was a 29-year-old, six-year NHL veteran.
They were somewhere in Finland, teammates on Team USA for the world hockey championships. One of them was petrified.
“I’m sitting in the second or third seat on the bus and scared out of my mind,” Drury recalled on Thursday morning, shortly after the Rangers’ president and GM introduced Sullivan as his new coach.
“Am I good enough to be here? Should I be here? I'm in college. And on comes Mike Sullivan and sits down next to me and spends the hour bus ride to the rink with me, talking to me about my life at BU and what my goals are.”
It was the start of a long relationship that has culminated in this: A coach/GM partnership the organization hopes will finally lead a talented, veteran Rangers team to the Stanley Cup finish line.
Drury said the two reminisced this week about that long-ago bus ride.
“To me, that's a little bit of a sense of what I've thought of him for a long time,” Drury said.
“And certainly, getting to play for him [with the Rangers from 2009-11] as an assistant coach and working with him in the international events the last couple of years, it's already a great relationship, and I think it's only going to get better each and every day.”
Drury said he did not have poor relationships with Sullivan’s predecessors, most recently Peter Laviolette and before him Gerard Gallant. But this time he got the man he has coveted for years, and not a moment too soon.
If the Rangers flop in 2025-26 the way they did last season, it will not be Sullivan on the hot seat but rather Drury, whose team went from Presidents’ Trophy winners and Eastern Conference finalists in 2023-24 to out of the playoffs altogether.
In Sullivan, the Rangers have a two-time Stanley Cup winner with the Penguins whose credentials are impeccable and who is certain not to find this job too big for him, even if it is in a far bigger market than Pittsburgh.
His knowledge of the Rangers’ personnel from so many years in the same division should ease the transition. So should his relationship with Drury.
Might all that give Sullivan more input into personnel than the average coach gets? That is to be determined. But Sullivan said he and Drury already have spoken at length about the need to be on the same page.
“I can just go back to the experiences that I've had over the years, and my experience certainly has told me that that relationship between the head coach and the general manager is really important,” Sullivan said.
“And I think it's important that we work together on that relationship, so that we can share the same vision and work toward the same goals.”
Drury said he always will defer to the coach on lineup decisions.
“I certainly have no intention of sticking my nose in that,” he said — but, he added, “There's constant feedback back and forth.
“There are no transactions or trades or call-ups that management does without speaking with the head coach. And that's not going to change here . . . We're in constant communication. We already have been in this short week. I think it's going to be a great partnership in the true sense of the word.”
Sullivan, who like Drury played collegiately at Boston University, worked with Drury on the U.S. Olympic Team for the 2022 Games before NHL players bowed out and more recently for the 4 Nations Face-Off, in which the United States lost the final to Canada.
“I'm really excited about the opportunity to build a partnership with Chris,” Sullivan said. “Really excited about potentially what we could build here, moving forward, that we can all be proud of.”
Gallant and Laviolette each led the Rangers to a conference final in his first season before taking a step back in his second.
The Rangers will look for better than that from Sullivan — no one more urgently than the guy who hired him. Drury no longer is a scared college kid, but he still could use a wise, older friend to join him for the coming ride.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
