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Sullivan rates with the best

Just where does Mike Sullivan’s quick success with the Penguins slot him among the great coaches in Pittsburgh sports history?

It’s strange to think it’s even remotely possible that a guy who has been at the helm of a team for a year and a half could rate being on the Mount Rushmore of coaches in this town.

But Sullivan does rate. And he does belong there.

Championships will do that.

If I had to choose four coaches/managers from Pittsburgh teams to create a Mount Rushmore in that regard, three of my selections seem crystal clear.

Chuck Noll

He’s at the top of the list.

The man was an assistant coach with the Baltimore Colts, a relatively faceless guy when the Steelers hired him to lead them out of the pro football wilderness.

The Steelers were terrible, coming off a 2-11-1 season in 1968, when Noll took the reins. In fact, the Steelers had not won more than five games in a season in five years.

By his fourth season, Noll had the Steelers in the playoffs and began a run of eight successive postseason appearances and four Super Bowl championships.

Danny Murtaugh

One of two Pirate managers to win more than 1,000 games, he won World Series titles in Pittsburgh 11 years apart — in 1960 and 1971.

He also guided the Pirates to four Eastern Division titles during the early 1970’s and was hired back as manager three different times to bail the Bucs out of trouble.

Mike Sullivan

The Penguins coach deserves to be there.

Not only has he gone undefeated in eight consecutive Stanley Cup playoff series, but Sullivan completely turned around an apparently lost season in 2015-16 en route to his first Cup.

This season, he overcame an incredible rash of injuries in getting the team to repeat. When a button needed pushed, Sullivan found the right one most of the time.

Besides, no other Penguin coach has won two Cups.

The fourth and final selection here isn’t so easy.

It could be Johnny Majors, who took over a pedestrian Pitt football program and turned it into an unbeaten national champion in 1976.

Or how about Jim Leyland, who became Pirate manager when nobody else wanted the job and built a team that came within a whisker of the World Series twice. Bill Cowher led the Steelers to a pair of Super Bowls. Fred Clarke managed the Pirates to a club record 1,422 wins and got them to the World Series in 1903 and 1909.

Bob Johnson led the Penguins to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

My choice? Majors. That team never lost.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle

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