Cassidy talks chance at Cup Final with Golden Knights in Q&A with NHL.com

DALLAS -- There is a giant disco ball sitting on the floor in the large storage room directly to the left of the Vegas Golden Knights dressing room at American Airlines Center. Bruce Cassidy is trying to figure out how he could take it home with him.

"That's perfect for Vegas, isn't it?" the Golden Knights coach said, smiling.

Cassidy is smiling a lot these days with his team leading the Dallas Stars 3-0 in the Western Conference Final entering Game 4 of the best-of-7 series here Thursday (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, CBC, SN, TVAS).

RELATED: [Complete Golden Knights vs. Stars series coverage]

He was in this position four years ago with the Boston Bruins, up 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes, one win from getting to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time.

The Bruins won 4-0 on the road in Game 4 but could not get past the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Final, losing Game 7 at home.

It eats at Cassidy that he didn't win the Stanley Cup with the Bruins, his favorite team while growing up in Ottawa and an organization he'd worked for since 2008.

But that's in the past. The chance he has with the Golden Knights is in front of him.

Cassidy talked about it all in a wide-ranging interview with NHL.com on Wednesday:

You've been in this spot before with Boston, one win away from getting to coach in the Stanley Cup Final. How do you feel right now especially knowing that for it to be taken away your team would have to lose four in a row?

"We don't want to be that team, obviously. I don't think that occupies a lot of space in your head, but you think about it sometimes. To me it's about 'How could that happen?' The way our team is playing, that's where I think as a coach you have a comfort level if you know you're not out there just stealing games, or it's one line or one guy. It's everybody, so it would have to take almost 18 guys to lose their game. That's where you feel good as a coach. These guys are dialed in. I keep saying it, but it is a veteran group. These guys have been there. … The guys that have been this far, a lot of them went the whole way their first year, I think they recognize why they didn't succeed. My first couple years in Boston, why didn't we beat Tampa Bay? We figured out why. They had bigger [defensemen]. We weren't able to get inside. Their top guys eventually got going. It was a little bit on us to change our offensive approach. That's what I see from our guys. I think they're getting inside. I think they understand how we've got to play and they're doing it."

You talk about the players and the experience they have, what it takes, learning from mistakes, past experience. You can do that too. How does that help you as a coach as you look around now and prepare?

"It helps me a lot in my demeanor on days like today. They're loose and it's OK. Sometimes as a coach in the playoffs you can think it's all business, but they have to have their downtime because it's mentally draining. We've got a nice little pattern here. They'll have their day mostly to themselves. There will be a team dinner sometimes. So you're still around and doing something, but it's not jammed down their throat. You asked me earlier, am I enjoying it? Yes. You get to smell the roses a little bit when you're going through it as opposed to the first time when you're like, 'Is this really happening?' and I have to make sure I'm uber prepared. So you're kind of grinding mentally to the point where you need a break too. We've handled that better, at least I have. With media demands, when you get asked about something outside of your team you just don't worry about it. It's out of your control. The Edmonton series about some of the hits and the discussion on (the Game 3 cross-checking penalty by Dallas forward) Jamie Benn today. It's up to someone else to decide, we'll just get our team ready. Some of that stuff if easier to deal with when you've been through it."

Tell me if I'm wrong, but the Golden Knights, with the way the team is built, the way it plays, remind me a lot of the Blues team that defeated your Bruins in the Cup Final in 2019. Do you agree?

"It's funny you say that. I think it's exactly the same. I was telling my wife, Julie, that this team reminds me a lot of St. Louis. People were not really taking them seriously and the goaltending was a question mark for St. Louis. 'Who is [Jordan] Binnington?' We're a heavy team, like St. Louis. They had their guys like [Vladimir] Tarasenko and [Ryan] O'Reilly, but it wasn't one line that beat you. I know that. They had team toughness and they just kept winning, finding ways to win. That's what they did all the way to the Final. You realize how good they are once you play them seven times, but leading up to it even the coaches I talked to were saying, 'Well, they're going to do this, but I think you're the better team.' Everyone is the better team or has the better goalie, and yet here we are probably not picked to win this series and we're on the cusp."

Do you ever get over losing in the Cup Final?

"Oh boy. I personally feel, and I can't account for everybody, but I think I took it as hard as anybody in that organization if not harder. I know how it affected me because you're that close. Then you go back the next year and you're pushing because you know you need to be a little bit better to win. Does that affect how you coach? Does that take its toll on the guys in the room because they're the ones that were as close as well? Do they go through some of the same things or do they just say, 'Well, next year is a new year.' I don't look at it that way. I look at it as we need to be a little bit better. Sometimes that can take its toll. Yes, it's still with me, but it's not really with me this year because it's a different group of guys. It's just different but it stuck with me in Boston, and you need to find a way to park that. Most of the time you do, but when you're that close it's not that easy."

You had a meeting with Jack Eichel in the summer soon after you got the job with the Golden Knights. What was that conversation like?

"It was right away in the summer. I have a place in Cape Cod and he was going to a wedding, so we arranged whatever worked for him. He happened to be driving through so we met halfway. I knew Jack a little bit. Kim Brandvold was our skills coach in Boston who worked with Jack at a younger age. So I had someone who helped us both. We were going to meet for a half an hour and it probably turned into an hour and a half. It was 'What do you need from me?' and 'Here's what I expect of you.' It just went from there. It was very productive. Jack was open about what he wanted to accomplish, and I was open about 'Here's how you're going to need to play and these are some of the things that will be different that will probably help you.' I didn't have any doubt that Jack would be a good defensive player, especially talking to Kim about what he believes in, the way he skates and how strong he is. It's just do you want to do it? From Day One he's wanted to do it. To me, Jack Eichel can be in the Selke Trophy conversation down the road. The thing with Jack that I haven't allowed him to do as much is kill penalties. That's part of it and it will eventually have to work in. And then there are the face-offs, but that'll be on him. The rest of his game is unbelievable defensively. He's really underrated defensively."

Not to keep going back to 2019, but did you know during the Stanley Cup Final he was in the stands at TD Garden watching?

"No. But that tells you a bit about Jack, right? He wants to be a winner and sometimes it just takes a little learning. I learned that as a coach. Jack is going through that, but he's going through it for the first time in the playoffs. For him to have his first and do it all in one fell swoop, that could be a great thing for him."

For a guy who previously spent his entire NHL coaching career on the East Coast, was the toughest adjustment just getting used to the travel, the time-zone changes, all of that in the Western Conference?

"That's absolutely the thing. We were on the road back east a lot at the start of the year so I was back in my own element and knowing the teams for me that was good. There's knowledge of the teams out west, but I relied on our guys. But the travel was different. I found it hard on myself, never mind the players. I think you have to eventually adjust. When people say you don't get to practice much, they're right. You have to find your time, make it work. That was by far the biggest thing, just planning practices. The thing about Vegas when you're coming back you're always gaining time when you land but you're exhausted. You've been flying no matter where you go. Even Seattle is a trip. Edmonton, Calgary, I mean you're hauling compared to Boston, where you go to Philadelphia or Buffalo or New York, any of those places. You're home by midnight and you could practice the next day if you really needed to, whereas here I just don't know if you can. It's tough on the guys."

The way the team has rallied around everything it has dealt with, especially all the different goalies, do you think it has thrived because of experience or just because of belief?

"It's both. There's some experience. I think of a guy like 'Petro' [Alex Pietrangelo]. He won with a goalie (Binnington, in 2019) who was kind of an unknown, so he knows it can happen. I don't want to call it magic, but if you get playing the right way, there is confidence in this league. There's different guys with stories like that. It wouldn't be the first thing I would think of either. I'd think you need an established guy. Well, maybe it's changing a little bit. If your team is good enough in front of him and you get the right guy in there, he just needs his opportunity. That's what has happened with [Adin] Hill and [Laurent] Brossoit. They've both played very well, but they're not relied on every night to be the driver to help us win games, so that's good. I think our guys do believe in our goaltenders, and they also believe that experience has taught them that guys will work harder to keep pucks out of the net as you go along. Our team has done that. You always wonder about that, will they check, who is going to be disciplined to check, who is going to protect leads, who is going to eat pucks when you need them to? Our experience has done that and I think a couple of the high-end teams didn't do it, didn't protect their leads, didn't close teams out, and now they're not playing."

So that leads directly into this question: What did you think of the Bruins this season as it was going on, and what do you think now since you're still playing and they aren't?

"Well, what I thought about is we have a place in Cape Cod that we really enjoy going to and my kids were born in New England. The way it was going I thought it's really going to stink for them because kids are mean at that age and they're going to be hearing about their dad. They're middle schoolers. I really felt for them, thinking hopefully they don't have to listen to that. That's back in the middle of the year. Now, whether they do or don't I don't know, but at least they can say, 'Hey, Vegas played well and my dad coached well there.' So that part was in the back of your mind. I've forgotten all about the regular season now. I know they had a historic season. Obviously, 'Monty' (coach Jim Montgomery) did a good job. They didn't advance. They lost to a good team. You can see it in Florida now. But I don't have hard feelings. I'm happy for our success in Vegas, let's put it that way."

I would imagine it's easier to handle that when you're all-in somewhere else, right?

"Yes. Listen, I was a Bruins fan growing up, so I am a Bruins guy and if there was one team that I wanted to win the Cup with it was Boston. That didn't happen. Close. But now I realize your head is where your feet are and we can be the first team to win a Stanley Cup ever in Vegas. That's a pretty big deal. We're all-in. My family is all settled in there now. They love it. I think it's just normal when you leave a place you like, there can be a period of adjustment. We went through it, quite honestly, and now we're on the other side. We'll go home in the summer and relax, but who knows where we'll end up down the road? We might end up in the West somewhere because we're closer to here. Those things are replaceable, but they do have roots there. My wife went to school at [Boston University] and Harvard. I was there in the organization. The kids were born in New England. There's still a lot there, but I don't know how much until we go back. We'll see. Hopefully it's with a big, shiny, silver trophy. That would be ideal."