Mike Sullivan leaves the Rangers.

The New York Rangers have lost their head coach... at least for now.

In a surprise announcement, the Rangers have just revealed that head coach Mike Sullivan has left the team, stepping away for personal reasons, and as a result he will not be behind the bench later tonight when the Rangers face off against the Detroit Red Wings.

We have unfortunately seen a trend of players and staff in and around the National Hockey League taking personal leaves of absence and unfortunately that is often as a result of some pretty awful news, so first and foremost my concern is with Sullivan and his family and I can only hope that everything is relatively alright.

As a result of Sullivan's absence tonight the Rangers will be lead by David Quinn and Joe Sacco, both of whom have experience as head coaches in the NHL. While not an ideal situation to be sure, the Rangers do seem like they will be in good hands given the experienced coaching staff that they currently employ. Quinn was of course the head coach of the Rangers for 3 seasons in the past so he will be intimately familiar with what will be expected of him for tonight's game.

There has been no word from the Rangers on the reasons behind Sullivan's unexpected absence or even if it could extend beyond just tonight's game. Once again I can only hope that there's nothing too serious going on here.