Sitting outside of the playoffs with Sidney Crosby mired in one of the longest scoring droughts of his career two months into the season, the Pittsburgh Penguins were not living up to expectations.

Then management fired Mike Johnston and named Mike Sullivan head coach, and everything started to click.

Sullivan led the Penguins to a 33-16-5 record when he took over behind the bench, and Crosby erupted for 66 points as Pittsburgh was the NHL's most dominant team down the stretch.

A former assistant with the New York Rangers, Sullivan was familiar with watching Crosby, and once they were on the same side, he used that familiarity to help motivate the captain.

"This game, it's an emotional game and it's hard to be good in the absence of it," Sullivan told Tom Gulitti of NHL.com. "We have to have controlled emotion, we have to channel it the right way, but emotion is a necessary part of competitive advantage and excelling in this game. And, from my experience coaching against Sid, that's when he's at his best, and some of the early conversations that I had with Sid when I first took the team over was to try to light that fire in his belly that makes him so great."

Crosby credited Sullivan's honest approach as one of the reasons for his turnaround in production.

"When there's a coaching change, especially as a captain you take a lot of responsibility on your shoulders and you expect more," Crosby said. "I wasn't happy with the way I started, and I think he just put me in situations and gave me opportunities to try to work my way back into things. He was just good holding everyone accountable, myself included, and making sure that I got better."

"It was pretty clear and he was very honest," Crosby added. "And that's all you can ask for is him to be straightforward like that and tell me what he thinks. ... And it wasn't just me. I think he was very clear with everyone what he expected from each individual guy and, at that point, it was just a matter of us going out and doing that."

Crosby experienced a similar situation when former head coach Dan Bylsma was hired in the middle of the 2009 season, which ended with a Stanley Cup Championship.

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