Bruce Cassidy opens up about shocking Golden Knights firing

“Yeah, you know. You grind for 74 games, and you want to be there at the end. That’s the payoff. I planned for the Cup, getting your name on the Cup again. Vegas, they have their standards. They felt we weren’t there, so they made a change. Great guys in that locker room, great players. You know, I’m excited for the guys but disappointed I didn’t get a chance to finish the job.”

Paul Bissonette asked if Cassidy felt he deserved a chance to fix things because of his 2023 Stanley Cup Championship. “I would have liked to see it through. I’ll definitely cede that, you know. We’d won once before, so we know what it looked like to win. We were a first-to-second-place team for most of the year. I felt like we would have gotten in…but yes, I would have loved the opportunity.”

Cassidy said he has started thinking of his next challenge after the Golden Knights. He was the coach there for four seasons, winning the Stanley Cup in his first year in Vegas. He led them to the playoffs in each of his three full seasons and was in playoff position when he was fired.

The Golden Knights hired Tortorella and went 7-0-1 down the stretch to lock in the Pacific Division championship. That has earned them a date with the Mammoth, which has been a tight one so far. Cassidy should be a highly-regarded coaching free agent once the season ends.