New details suggest Bruce Cassidy lost the Golden Knights locker room
Photo credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images
Bruce Cassidy was out, and Elliotte Friedman's account made this look like more than a late-season coaching change in Vegas.
The Golden Knights made the move with 8 games left, a jarring call for a club still battling to stay in the playoff picture.
That alone made this a bigger story than a standard bench change.
What pushed this report into another lane was the suggestion that tension had been sitting there for a while, well before Sunday's firing.
Friedman connected the move to issues that didn't suddenly appear this week.
He put it this way:
"Behind the scenes he is tough," said Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast. "If you look at Vegas they have had assistant coaches leave before because he can be a hard guy to work for. We know now that in Boston and Vegas there have been players he's battled with behind the scenes, he's a tough hard demanding guy."
That's not just a comment on style. In a room chasing points late in the season, that kind of friction can wear thin fast when the message stops landing.
Friedman then pointed to something even more telling from Vegas' Cup year.
"I had a player say to me tonight, he texted me, and he said back in 2023, even when Vegas won the Stanley Cup, he was having battles with some of his players," said Friedman
Last spring may have changed everything
The bigger flashpoint may have come after Vegas lost to Edmonton in 5 games in the 2nd round last year. That's where the story gets sharper.
"Edmonton beats them in the 2nd round last year in 5 games and it was a very disappointing series for the Golden Knights," said Friedman. "And I just heard... between games 4 and 5, there was a really hard meeting or a really hard series of meetings between Cassidy and some of the players and the players didn't like what was said."
If that carried into the summer, it explains why this wasn't cleaned up by opening night. It also explains why the room may have drifted further from the coach as the pressure climbed.
Friedman added another layer from the end of last season:
"At the exit meetings some players were pretty blunt about how they felt about what was said to them," revealed Friedman. "Kelly McCrimmon backed his coach who he won a Stanley Cup with and he came back this year."
That backing bought Cassidy another season, but maybe not another reset. Once a room checks out, a coach can still push the right buttons on paper and get no response on the ice.
Friedman's final line may be the cleanest read on the whole thing:
" I just think that it really sounds like the message wasn't getting through anymore."
In this league, when that happens in late March, the coach usually pays for it.
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| POLL | ||
MARS 30|211 ANSWERS New details suggest Bruce Cassidy lost the Golden Knights locker room Did the Golden Knights wait too long to fire Bruce Cassidy ? | ||
| Yes | 147 | 69.7 % |
| No | 64 | 30.3 % |
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