Cassidy eager for fresh start with Golden Knights

LAS VEGAS -- The walls in Bruce Cassidy's office at City National Arena remain bare. No remnants of his past life, his six seasons at the helm of the Boston Bruins, and no early souvenirs of his new life as the coach of the Vegas Golden Knights. The entire office is empty save a white board and a cup full of its corresponding markers, a lone banana, and a couch for conversation.

There wasn't much that could fit into the two suitcases each member of the Cassidy family -- Bruce, wife Julie, son Cole and daughter Shannon -- was allotted for their trip from their old life in Boston to their new one in Las Vegas on Aug. 12, three days before school began. They paid for second bags, sure, but how many memories could really fit around the necessities?
The rest will come later when the Cassidys move from their rental to their permanent Vegas home Sept. 30, a welcome milestone for a family that had gotten accustomed to life in Winchester, Mass. That is officially gone now, the family closing on the sale this week, the rest of their stuff heading west shortly.
It's bittersweet. But Cassidy, at least, is ready for the challenge ahead.
"Antsy to get going," he said, a week before the opening of training camp.
Because Cassidy is ready to put the Bruins behind him. He is ready for training camp to start with the Golden Knights, ready to learn the ins and outs of his new team, ready to start developing relationships and installing systems.
Ready for the past to fade into, well, the past.
Cassidy was hired as coach of the Golden Knights on June 14, a mere eight days after being fired from the Bruins. He was the hottest of hot commodities after compiling a 245-108-46 record (.672) with the Bruins, including making it to the seventh game of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, losing at home to the St. Louis Blues.
But the Golden Knights are in a tricky position, coming off a season in which they missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in their five-year existence. They endured a swath of injuries last season and, while many of those absent players -- forward Mark Stone, particularly -- are set to return, another key player has been lost for the year, with goalie Robin Lehner out for the season following hip surgery.
So is the Cup within reach for this team?
"That's to be determined," Cassidy said. "I think on paper we're strong on the back end, as good as anybody. I like our depth up front. We have some sandpaper, a good fourth line. They can give you some momentum. Our special teams will be strong, we've got lots of killers.
"The question's going to be in nets. Can they handle it? I don't have the answer. … If the goaltending ramps up as the year goes on, yes."
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There is one non-goalie, though, who might be the key to what happens in Vegas.
While they were both still in Boston this summer, Cassidy sat down with forward Jack Eichel to have coffee and go over what they might be able to do together. Eichel came off neck surgery last season to play 34 games with the Golden Knights and had 25 points (14 goals, 11 assists) after playing 21 games the season prior with Buffalo.
"I look at it as we're both kind of new to Vegas," Cassidy said. "He's a few months ahead of me, but he's not that far. So we're kind of coming in together."
Cassidy wanted to make sure Eichel knew the expectations in his play, his leadership, his responsibilities as a centerman. He called Eichel "complex," and acknowledged the difficulties that Eichel has already faced in his seven seasons in the NHL, comparing him to a former player, Taylor Hall, with whom Eichel is close enough to have crashed on his Boston couch all summer. Cassidy found Hall guarded, but open to conversation, even if he didn't always agree with his coach.
He pondered aloud recently whether to approach Eichel, now healthy to start his first full season with the Golden Knights, in the same way he approached Hall.
Eichel, for one, sounds open to his new coach.
"Just a lot of positives, with how smart he is with the game," Eichel said. "Obviously, somebody that's had a ton of success in Boston, so far in his tenure as a coach in the NHL, and I think he's going to be awesome for our group. Between his hockey mind and his ability to hold guys accountable and push people, you see it in Boston. There's a lot of guys there that have had a lot of success under him.
"I think he does a lot to get the most out of players. And I think that is what you want in a coach."
The plan for Cassidy is to mold old and new together, east and west, Boston and Vegas, a combination of systems that, he hopes, will yield the best results possible for a team that wants more for itself than many experts predict it will get.
"It was half Boston and half Vegas," Cassidy said, of the plan for the team. "The red line back was more Boston, we felt that it was successful there. And from the red line in, I think Vegas has done a really good job."
To that end, Cassidy retained a pair of assistant coaches from the previous tenure of Peter DeBoer, who spent two and a half seasons coaching the Golden Knights before being fired May 16 and who has since been hired as coach of the Dallas Stars. Cassidy kept assistants Ryan Craig and Misha Donskov, partially because the players advocated for them, and brought in John Stevens.
"They liked their offense and they backed it up," Cassidy said. "I said, all right. That was a challenge for us at times. We have some similar challenges as Boston, the scoring, in-zone scoring. Their numbers are very good on the rush, face-offs. … So, that will be a little bit of the same, what's in front of us than what I left, for offense."
He recognizes the similarities.
"We've got to find a way to generate more," Cassidy said. "Almost the exact same challenge we had in Boston."
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The Cassidy family isn't fully done with Boston.
A piece of Massachusetts will remain with them, literally, in the Cape Cod house they consider their eventual retirement, and the imprint that six seasons in the hockey hotbed of Boston made on Cassidy.
That was his second chance at a head coaching job, one he worked for more than 13 years to earn after a brief, failed stint as coach of the Washington Capitals from 2002-04. And he was successful, making the playoffs in every season with the Bruins. Which is why any soul searching he's done after his firing isn't likely to yield a dramatic difference in the way his teams play on the ice.
"Talking to the coaches, the GM, they're going to trust what you're saying because it worked there. Now you've got to teach it, right?" Cassidy said. "Get them to buy into it, but it's not like they're going to look at you like you have two heads."
The off-ice piece that was brought up to him upon his firing in Boston related to his messaging and, specifically, his messaging in the media, the way his usual honesty could come off outside the dressing room.
"I felt from day one I was honest with the media in Boston," he said. "For me it felt like they respected that, the fan base respected that, hey, he's telling it like it is. Then it was, well, players don't like that. I'm like, well, it's been addressed with the players how the coach stands and feels about their game.
"So I have to find a way to smooth that, to find a better balance there. Because I do believe in telling it like it is."
The idea of changing his approach, of being more careful with his words, is not something that comes naturally to him.
"I just didn't feel that was me," he said. "I don't know if I can change that, where I walk up there and be super vanilla. I like to talk the game and sometimes when you talk the game you're going to say things that, after, you go, jeez, maybe I should have thought that through. But when you're speaking from the heart, you're not always going to filter every little thing you say."
He thinks through generational differences, through the needs of the players of today. It's something he keeps thinking about, even after this reporter has left his office. And he calls back two hours later, wanting to add to and clarify his point.
He has been pondering the changing dynamics between coach and player, an evolution in the way that the messaging comes across. It's a good change, he makes clear, a needed one and, while it's true that the level of accountability doesn't and can't change, maybe the delivery of the message can, maybe needs to be softened.
He acknowledges the power of social media, the negativity constantly thrown at young players, and the way that can mess with their heads -- and the responsibility of a coach to take that into account. On Cassidy's way out of Boston, much was made of his relationships with the younger players in the room, and whether he was the right coach for that specific group. There were public issues with forward Jake DeBrusk, who ultimately rescinded a pending trade request after Cassidy was fired. But Cassidy looks back on the successes, the players he helped mold, as evidence of what he was able to accomplish.
"We had a lot of young players come through Boston and I think we built a lot of them into good players," he said. He starts listing names: Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, Matt Grzelcyk, Jakub Zboril, Jeremy Swayman, David Pastrnak. "And that was the part I … started reflecting on it. OK, I've got to be mindful of it. But I push back on that one. I don't think it's completely accurate."
He does ask himself whether there were a few more he could have reached - Anders Bjork, now with the Buffalo Sabres, pops into his mind - but generally, he was satisfied with the job he did.
And he's ready to move on.
"Honestly, I'll say this: I was telling Julie. I said, I'm so sick of talking about Boston," Cassidy said. "I just want to focus on Vegas. That's what's in front of me. I'm in the moment and looking ahead."
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What's ahead is a team with talent. A team with belief. A team that -- should its goaltending hold up -- has a chance to come out of the Pacific Division after falling three points short of the second wild card from the Western Conference, behind the Nashville Predators last season.
What ahead is a team that, whether this season or beyond, he hopes gets his name etched on the Cup. That was his major regret coming out of Boston.
"Talking to the older guys, they want to get back to being a well-respected, winning [team]," Cassidy said. "They missed the playoffs. They'd never done that, missed the playoffs. Even though they haven't been around that, that's their expectation."
Given the goaltending issues, Cassidy may be the perfect coach for this Vegas team. His defensive system, which he is committed to, can ease the way for goalies. It can provide some shelter for them, which is what they may need with 25-year-old Logan Thompson trying to earn the starter's job, with Adin Hill and the currently-injured Laurent Brossoit competing for time.
"It's a goaltender-friendly system," Cassidy said. "It always has been in Boston."
And maybe those issues in net yield a season which the pressure is off or lessened. Opponents may be overlooking the Golden Knights, which could -- Cassidy posits -- be to their advantage.
"I love our team," Stone, the Golden Knights captain, said. "I've always loved our team ever since I've gotten here, every team that they've put on the ice I've been excited about. It's no different going into this year. Excited about the roster we have, excited about the additions we've made. We have a really good team. We lost in the past, I still firmly believe in the group."
So does Cassidy. And he's ready for his next era to begin.