Pittsburgh Hockey Insider has no direct affiliation to the Pittsburgh Penguins, NHL or NHLPA
Mike Sullivan Honors the Blue Jackets and Johnny Gaudreau's Legacy Amid Difficult Season
The Penguins defeated the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night, and after the game, Mike Sullivan honoured his opponents after their incredibly tough season.
Coming into the 2024/25 regular season, no one expected much from the Columbus Blue Jackets, and after the incredibly difficult loss of Johnny Gaudreau in the summer, it became even harder.
However, the team have battled hard to this point in honour of their fallen friend, as they still sit just two points back of the final Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference with a few weeks left in the season, with the team falling short to Pittsburgh on Friday.
After the Penguins defeated the Blue Jackets on Friday in what will be the final meeting between the two teams this season, Mike Sullivan paid tribute to the team and how hard they've fought during must what be one of the toughest seasons in league history for a team.
«They deserve an awful lot of credit for how hard they've played and through a challenging time,» Sullivan said Thursday in Cranberry. «That's never an easy circumstance. I'm sure in a lot of ways - it appears on the outside - they chose to utilize a very difficult circumstance as a rallying cry. I know how popular Johnny Gaudreau was with his teammates in Columbus.
Those players and the coaching staff and management team in Columbus deserve an enormous amount of credit for how they've chosen to approach a very difficult circumstance.»
Those players and the coaching staff and management team in Columbus deserve an enormous amount of credit for how they've chosen to approach a very difficult circumstance.»
Perhaps the most impressive part of the season is the way that they've managed to do all of this through their injuries and their relative inexperience to their Eastern Conference rivals.
Ultimately, this is a season, for good and bad that will be remembered for a long time in Columbus, and everyone in the NHL has clearly admired what they've been able to do in 2024/25.
| POLL | ||
MARS 22 | 124 ANSWERS Mike Sullivan Honors the Blue Jackets and Johnny Gaudreau's Legacy Amid Difficult Season Will the Blue Jackets make the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season? | ||
| Yes | 35 | 28.2 % |
| No | 89 | 71.8 % |
| List of polls | ||