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The first order of summer housekeeping was an easy one, as Bruins GM Don Sweeney has officially dropped the ‘interim’ tag from Bruce Cassidy’s title and made him the club’s full-time coach.
Named the 28th coach in franchise history, the move comes on the heels of an impressive run that saw the 51-year-old Cassidy lead the Bruins to an impressive 18-8-1 record to finish the year en route to the club’s first playoff berth since the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and just three days after the shorthanded B’s first-round elimination at the hands of the Senators.
It’s a move that made all the sense in the world for the Bruins, too.
Under Cassidy, the Bruins returned to the roots of what made them an elite club in the last decade of hockey, with the third-best home record upon his hiring (the Bruins had the third-worst home record when Cassidy took over, and the third-worst home-ice record over the last 16 months), and their scoring and goaltending became noticeably better. The Bruins also remained an excellent group when it came to their special teams play, and everybody in that room bought into Cassidy’s message.
“We obviously had some success with [Bruce Cassidy] and it shows with the way that we played,” Bruins defenseman Torey Krug, who finished this season with a career-best 51 points, said. “The guys were excited to play for him. I think the guys in this room would echo that same message.”
“It was kind of a new scene and stuff when you have a new coach, so, we wanted to make the playoffs, and obviously Butchy wanted us to, everyone here wanted to be in the playoffs, so I think we played a more aggressive game, and I think it ended up good for us at the end,” B’s winger Frank Vatrano said. “When you’re playing more aggressive, you’re not really playing on your heels, you’re playing on your toes the whole time. It helps, and I think that’s what we did down the stretch.”
With 18 wins in 27 games, Cassidy’s full-season pace would be 55 wins and 112 points. Of course, you can say that Cassidy experienced a great deal of luck during his 27-game sample (the Bruins saw their five-on-five shooting percentage go up nearly three percentage points while their save percentage increased by a staggering .021 percentage points under Cassidy from where it was under Julien) -- and that you can’t realistically expect this team to be a 50-win or 110-plus point group. But the overall record did not lie, and it would be unfair to hold a hypothetical slump or dip against what he was able to tangibly accomplish with this roster, and with little to no breathing room in a playoff race.
I think you could make the case that Cassidy’s overall message and desired pace of play is where the Bruins need to go if they’re to keep up with an Atlantic Division (and entire NHL, for that matter) that is getting faster and more aggressive with each passing draft of babyfaced, highly-skilled burners, too.
This is Cassidy’s second tenure as an NHL coach, and his first since a 2002 to 2003 run in Washington.
Cassidy will meet with the media at 10 a.m. on Thursday at TD Garden.
Ty Anderson is the Boston Bruins beat writer for WEEI.com, and has been covering the National Hockey League for HockeyBuzz.com since 2010. He can be heard on the Saturday Skate program on 93.7 WEEI (Boston), can also be found in the New England Hockey Journal magazine, and has been part of the Boston Chapter of the PHWA since 2013. Contact him on Twitter or send him an email at Ty.AndersonHB[at]gmail.com.
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