Golden Knights coach to honor family friend during day with Stanley Cup

There were nights when watching the Vegas Golden Knights provided a balm for Linda Murray and her family. Nights when the Murrays would push aside their grief and focus on hockey, focus on the drama playing out in front of them, a chance to take their minds off the absence in their midst.

Murray would watch Bruce Cassidy coaching and the Golden Knights playing, and the fact that her daughter, Cassidy, wasn't there would be just a little less painful, less present, less soul-destroying.

"They gave us a lot of hope and a lot of life while the Vegas [Golden] Knights were playing," Murray said. "Because for us to sit as a family at our kitchen table is really painful, to sit as three people is a very hard thing to do. Her presence is just missed so much. Just reminders everywhere. It's just a torturous, tortuous journey.

"But one thing that we were able to do is sit and watch the Vegas Golden Knights games and root for them and start to escape our reality for an hour every other night."

They got to watch the Golden Knights' run through the Stanley Cup Playoffs, watch them defeat the Florida Panthers in five games in the Stanley Cup Final. They got to watch Bruce Cassidy raise the Cup.

And now, when Vegas' coach brings the Cup to Milton, Massachusetts, on Thursday, Murray, her husband, Dave, and their son, Adam, will be there. In his only public event during his day with the Cup, Bruce Cassidy will bring it to the place where Cassidy Murray, who died in March of 2022, grew up, not far from where he restarted his NHL coaching career with the Boston Bruins and where he still has a summer home on Cape Cod.

As part of his day with the Cup, Bruce will also help launch the Cassidy Murray Foundation, a nonprofit created to help expand educational opportunities and support the mental health needs of those facing unthinkable tragedy.

"Our goal is to help families that are thrust into this world of grief and are in the same position and to engage with mental health professionals and grief and trauma services," Linda Murray said.

In honor of their daughter, Cassidy, Dave, Adam and Linda Murray have started the Cassidy Murray Foundation.

Cassidy Murray was 13 when she was killed while tubing in Aruba. She fell off a raft and was hit by the boat when it came back to retrieve her, later dying of her injuries. It was a tragedy and a nightmare for her family, and for her friends back home, including Shannon Cassidy, the daughter of Bruce Cassidy.

"It's very meaningful to me to be able to have [the Cup] in a neighborhood where kids can have access to that part of it, and it's even extra special that you're helping out those family friends," Bruce Cassidy told NHL.com last week. "You're accomplishing two things.

"Maybe this helps them in a way to do something positive in her name."

It's why Bruce Cassidy was so eager to help the Murrays, to do what he could for a family he had met through the friendship of their daughters in September of 2021.

"We were fortunate enough to win the Cup, and if it can help the family get some good memories of Cassidy forever, then that's what we'll try to do," he said. "It's always going to be a little bit hard on Linda and Dave, but maybe this will make it easier, at least for a little while."

The families met when Shannon left the public school system in Winchester, Massachusetts, for seventh grade, enrolling in Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge. Almost immediately, Shannon was drawn to Cassidy Murray and, along with another girl, became a tight trio.

They bonded over the similarities in their names, over hockey, over everything, and had been on vacation in Florida together a week before the accident for the first part of spring break.

"Cassidy was in the prime of her life, 13 years old, just bounced into every room," Linda Murray said. "A lifelong gymnast that then stopped doing gymnastics and took up hockey and always had a love of hockey from her older brother. She just had an amazing smile, a zest for life. Just full of energy, living her best life."

Bruce Cassidy hoists the Stanley Cup with the help of us his family, including daughter Shannon (second from right), after the Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Florida Panthers in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final on June. 13.

The Murrays had decided to take a vacation that March, a refuge from COVID-19 and a change from their usual visit to Ireland, where the family is from. With college approaching fast for Adam, they wanted to take advantage of the time they had.

They had been out on scooters the morning of March 23 when Cassidy asked if she could go on a tube ride. Linda and Adam declined, but as Linda said, "Her dad would do anything for her. She was daddy's girl and he never said no to her."

Each a strong swimmer, Cassidy and Dave left with life jackets on.

The next thing Linda knew, Adam was telling her there had been an accident.

"I couldn't understand, like what kind of an accident could have happened," Linda said. "She fell out of the raft and when the boat came back to get her, it ran over her. She was in really rough shape. They worked on her for some time, but they weren't able to save her.

"So many things went wrong. So many things should have been done."

After Cassidy's death, the Murrays went to work trying to right the wrongs they had experienced, to change the boating safety rules in Aruba, which included asking for spotters on boats during a meeting with the Prime Minister of Aruba on a Zoom call the day their daughter would have graduated from seventh grade. They have worked with Congressman Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts and Consul General Margy Bond, the United States' chief diplomat in Aruba, to push the country to implement reforms.

They have also started a campaign of awareness to try and make sure that whether in Aruba, the United States or wherever, people understand the safety precautions and have a plan of action should they fall off a boat.

It helped, a little, to feel like they were doing something.

"I think it was important for Adam to see his parents not just lie down and die. Because we could have," Linda Murray said. "But we felt like we still have a job to do."

And though change has been slow, Murray feels like there might be a reason for cautious optimism in the days ahead.

"Obviously, too late for Cassidy, but in some way, it feels like we have done some good in the midst of all this tragedy to make it a safer place so no other family has to feel the way we feel," Murray said.

Since Cassidy's death, the family has struggled, but they have been bolstered by the community around them, including the family of Bruce Cassidy.

Bruce Cassidy hangs the jersey honoring Cassidy Murray before the Boston Bruins' game against the Toronto Maple Leafs on March 29, 2022.

On March 29, six days after Cassidy's death, Bruce invited the Murrays to a Bruins game at TD Garden. Before the game, the then Bruins coach hung a No. 12 jersey with Murray on the back above Boston's bench.

Then, during some of the dark days last winter, it was the coach's summer home on Cape Cod that provided a refuge for the Murray family, a place to get away from questions, to walk the beach and try to heal.

"We said, 'Listen, use our house any time you want, go for a walk on the beach, it might allow you a little sanctuary,'" Cassidy said. "From there, conversations grew. They talked about Cassidy's memory. So when we won the Cup, I said, 'We can help you get it started if that's what you want to do.'"

It was so much sooner than Linda and Dave Murray could have anticipated, and it meant the world to them. Because all they want to do, now, is help others who face what they have and are still facing.

"I wish that I could have had somebody that said to me, I lost my child, I'm this many years down the road and I'm here with hope," Murray said.

"Just so honored that the NHL and Bruce are willing to do this. It's just tremendous and gives us hope."