Sitting away from the action while his former team is tied 2-2 in their first-round series, Bruce Cassidy wishes he could have been on the bench for this Vegas run.
Fired suddenly from the Golden Knights in late March with only eight games to go in the regular season, Cassidy spoke about his sudden departure from Vegas in an appearance on NHL on TNT Tuesday night.
“You grind for 74 games and you wanna be there at the end. That’s the payoff, right? Playing for the Cup, getting your name on the Cup again,” Cassidy said when asked if he was surprised about the sudden firing. “But Vegas, they had their standard, they felt they weren’t there, so they made a change.
“Great guys in that locker room, great players, so I’m excited for the guys but disappointed I didn’t get a chance to finish the job with them.”
Cassidy was fired on the tail end of a 4-9-2 record in March, a run that began with Vegas at the top of the Pacific and ended with the team in third, six points behind the first-place Anaheim Ducks.
He was replaced by John Tortorella, who had been away from the NHL since being dismissed from the Philadelphia Flyers on March 27, 2025, but had served as an assistant for Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Over those final eight games, the Golden Knights went 7-0-1, guiding the team to first place in the Pacific, and are 2-2 in their first-round series against the Utah Mammoth.
Cassidy won the Stanley Cup with the Golden Knights back in 2023 — his first year with the team — and would’ve liked to be part of another run with a promising side searching for another title.
“I would’ve liked to see it through… We’d won once before, so we knew what it looked like to win,” Cassidy said. “We were a first or second-place team most of the year — I felt we would’ve got in (to playoffs). I don’t know where we would’ve finished at the end, that’s speculation, but yes, I would’ve loved to have had the opportunity. But didn’t work out that way, so you start thinking about your next challenge.”
The Golden Knights, under Tortorella, get back in action Wednesday night for a Game 5 return to their home barn. Catch the action on Sportsnet at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT.