Following the Boston Bruins loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in seven games in the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, there were a lot of questions surrounding the future of the Black and Gold. Players were thinking of retirement, and free agents needed to be addressed, as well as almost everything else. One area that seemed to be solid was the coaching, more importantly, head coach Bruce Cassidy. After leading the Bruins to a huge turnaround in the second half of the 2021-22 season, they went from the outside of a playoff berth to securing the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
After the dust settled and exit meetings were finished, everyone went their separate ways for the summer. On June 6, general manager (GM) Don Sweeney suddenly had a change of heart on his coach. Was it pressure from above from team President Cam Neely or was it some stuff from exit interviews with the players? We’ll more than likely never know, but one thing we know is that Sweeney came up with a surprising decision and a change of heart.
Sweeney Fired Cassidy After Six Seasons
On June 6, Sweeney made the short drive from Warrior Ice Arena, the team’s practice facility, to Cassidy’s suburban Boston home to meet with him. The meeting was to inform Cassidy that he would not be returning as head coach and that organization would be going in a different direction. It was a decision that caught a lot of people off guard and sent shockwaves through the organization.
“A very, very difficult decision yesterday,” Sweeney said. “I met with Bruce in the afternoon. Both professionally and personally, I want to thank he and his family, Julie and Cole and Shannon, for what they’ve done both on and off the ice for the Boston Bruins organization. A really tough day overall. But I had to make a decision that I felt [was] in the best interest of where our team is at now and moving forward.”
As a head coach in Boston, Cassidy went 245-108-46 in the regular season and was 36-37 in the playoffs. He brought the Black and Gold to Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final before they lost to the St. Louis Blues, 4-1, at home. His team was on pace to win the Presidents’ Trophy in the 2019-20 season when it was cut short in March 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic. They ended up losing in the second round of the postseason in the Toronto Playoff Bubble. One year later they lost in the second round to the New York Islanders and then in the first round to the Hurricanes. Sweeney decided it was in their best interest to move forward with a new coach and with a new message for the room to listen to.
“I just felt that the messaging and the voice that was going to be required, I felt that we needed a new direction,” said Sweeney.
At the time of the firing, Cassidy appeared to take the fall for a roster that underachieved in 2021-22 between veteran core players and new free agents that were brought in during the previous summer that never reached their potential. However, his firing was still a surprise.
Bruins Hire Jim Montgomery
It took a month for Sweeney to hire his next coach and it ended up being a hire that nobody saw coming. A lot of names were being thrown around, but one candidate that stuck out and the Bruins went with was Jim Montgomery. He was assistant coach with the Blues the two previous seasons after being fired by the Dallas Stars in 2019 for what the organization deemed “unprofessional conduct.”
That hiring led to a chain reaction of things that happened to allow Boston to have a record-breaking 2022-23 regular season. Patrice Bergeron returned for another season, David Krejci returned following a year of playing in his home country of Czechia and Jake DeBrusk, who had requested a trade from the Bruins through his agent rescinded his request to remain with the club that made him the 14th overall pick of the 2015 Entry Draft.
All three players played a big role in the Bruins setting a new NHL record for wins in a regular season with 65 and points with 135. Trent Frederic had a career season that nobody saw coming, Hampus Lindholm played at a Norris Trophy level for an entire season and Linus Ullmark is the front-runner to win the Vezina Trophy after winning 40 games against just six losses. He had a 1.89 goals against average (GAA) and a .917 save percentage (SV%). After years of battling injuries with the Buffalo Sabres, the 29-year-old showed that he’s capable to be the goalie the Bruins thought he could be when they signed him to a four-year, $20 million contract.
Nearly the entire roster benefitted from the coach change and system. The defensemen were given more freedom to play, DeBrusk looked like a player the Bruins would hope he would be, while even Nick Foligno and Tomas Nosek both had the biggest bounce-back seasons. After a successful regular season, things changed dramatically in the playoffs.
Related: Blame for Bruins’ Playoff Collapse Spreads Deep in Locker Room
Despite taking a 3-1 series lead on the Florida Panthers, the Bruins failed to close them out and suffered one of the more historic postseason collapses. They lost three series close-out games, Games 5 and 7 at home in overtime, sandwiched around a 7-5 setback in Game 6 in Florida. Players were dealing with injuries, which all teams are at that time of year, but the biggest postseason takeaways were not only the players who seemed to play with the weight of the world on their shoulders, but some questionable decisions by Montgomery. All of that led to a stunning end to what was an otherwise rememberable season.
Cassidy Was Hired By Vegas
Cassidy wasn’t out of work for very long. He was quickly scooped up by the Vegas Golden Knights and looked to take a team that underachieved to the next level. He was hired and given a roster that was ready to compete for a championship with some stars. Vegas made a Stanley Cup Final appearance in their first season of 2017-18.
In his first season in Las Vegas, Cassidy has led the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final against the Panthers. In the regular season, Vegas finished with the most points in the Western Conference with 111, split their two games with the Bruins, and beat the Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers, and Dallas Stars on their way to the Final. It’s not surprising to see Cassidy have success with his new team as he had success in Boston under different circumstances.
He is a tough coach that demands a lot from his players and it appeared that it wore down the Bruins locker room. Players were playing tight, it felt like they were always looking over their shoulders. Since Sweeney and the Bruins didn’t want that anymore, Cassidy has taken that with him to Vegas and has them two wins away from their first Stanley Cup championship.
Cassidy’s Success Has to Be Frustrating for Bruins Fans & Sweeney
Sweeney denies to this day that the players in the Bruins’ locker room had an influence on the firing of Cassidy. Whether or not that’s true, we’ll most likely never know. There is no doubt that Cassidy is tough on his players and sometimes that can rub people the wrong way, especially younger players and some of those younger players did not develop the way the front office would have hoped. Under Montgomery, some of those players did take a step, even some a big step, in their development under the first-year Boston coach. Even veterans at the beginning of the season like Brandon Carlo admitted back in September that a new voice was “something we needed” (from ‘Brandon Carlo, Jim Montgomery and the impact of a new voice on the Bruins: ‘Something we really needed,’ The Athletic, Sept. 15, 2022).
It was a move that ended up working out well for everyone involved, especially Cassidy. The Bruins had a historic regular season with 65 wins and 135 points, but their season came to an abrupt end against the Panthers. It was a disappointing end to a season that many thought that was going to have a storybook ending, but it had a different and historic ending for all the wrong reasons.
Cassidy landed on his feet in Vegas and has his team in the Stanley Cup Final against the Panthers. There is no doubt that he is a tremendous coach as his work in Boston speaks for itself. He is getting the most out of Golen Knights’ team that has come up short in the postseason before but has the talent to lift the Cup in June. A coach’s voice only has a shelf life for so long in a locker room and it was clear that Cassidy’s was outdated in Boston. It’s being received well in Vegas in his first season with his new team. They entered the Final with a 12-5 playoff record, the same record the Bruins had in 2019 before facing the Blues. Before Game 1 against Florida, he spoke about the possibility of returning to the Boston area this summer, mainly Cape Cod.
“We’ll see,” Cassidy said. “Hopefully, it’s with a big shining silver trophy. That would be ideal.” (from ‘Final shows different ways to build winner,’ Boston Globe, June 4, 2023).
If that happens, he’ll end up getting the last laugh.
