Maple Leafs-Penguins scenario could bring Mike Sullivan to Rangers

NHL

slap shots

By Larry Brooks

May 13, 2023 | 5:29pm

It does seem somewhat far-fetched, does it not, this scenario we tweeted midweek under which, A) Toronto general manager Kyle Dubas would leave the Maple Leafs on an expiring contract to take over the Penguins; B) He would bring coach Sheldon Keefe with him; C) That, in turn, would leave Mike Sullivan without a job; D) Which would allow the two-time Stanley Cup winner with ties to Chris Drury to take over behind the bench for the Rangers?

I would acknowledge that would appear to be in the Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson realm of possibility, but at the same time I should tell you that I received an unsolicited text from a player late Thursday who said the rumor “was getting pretty loud.”

That might mean nothing more than the tweet and resulting follow-ups bouncing around an echo chamber, but we’ll see, won’t we, in the wake of Toronto’s latest disappointment? Dubas will probably exit. Keefe almost certainly will not return.

It is surely possible they could continue as a matched set after more than a decade’s relationship that stretches back to the OHL.

But the fly-in lab pertains to Sullivan’s relationship with the Penguins’ Fenway Sports Group ownership that fired president Brian Burke and GM Ron Hextall after the season, yet not only retained Sullivan but has included him as a member of influence in the ongoing GM search.

The question in Pittsburgh is this: Would the incoming GM be obligated to retain Sullivan, who has four years remaining on his contract?

And if not, could the wheel spin so that Sullivan, a Rangers assistant for four years under John Tortorella, winds up back on Broadway? The far-fetched sometimes does come to fruition.

It is always about Gary Bettman’s relationships with individual team owners. Never forget that.

So though the “fix” might not have been in for the lottery, in which the draft’s golden child wound up on the league’s favorite-son franchise, the commissioner enabled that by refusing to exact any meaningful discipline on the Wirtz ownership in Chicago relating to the Kyle Beach sexual abuse case and decade-long coverup.

The Devils lost a first-rounder and a third-rounder and were fined $3 million over the contrived Ilya Kovalchuk circumvention case before the first-rounder was returned after the team was sold to a more kindly viewed ownership. The Coyotes were stripped of first-round and second-round picks for violating combine testing rules. The Blackhawks?

A chump-change fine of $2 million was levied in mid-December of 2021 and permission was granted with eyes wide open to participate in the 2023 Connor Bedard sweepstakes.

Bothsidesism has made its way into the NHL.

That’s the takeaway after the notoriously incompetent vice…