Cassidy fits right in
Coach earns support from players, Sweeney
Bruins general manager Don Sweeney will have plenty of tough decisions to make this offseason. Naming a head coach was not one of them.
Sweeney admitted yesterday he felt “very comfortable” moving so quickly to remove the interim tag from Bruce Cassidy’s job title.
Indeed, it’s unlikely that many of Sweeney’s personnel moves will work out as well as his Feb. 7 replacement of the fired Claude Julien with Cassidy as the B’s interim head coach. It was a bit of a desperate act — an attempt to salvage what had been an oddly up-and-down season, with the very real threat of sitting out the playoffs for a third successive year.
And, man, did it work. But for a brief losing streak from Games 71-74, the B’s displayed a new consistency in effort, execution and enthusiasm. The team finished the regular season with an 18-81 mark under Cassidy and then, even in losing a six-game series vs. Ottawa, played admirably hard and well despite an epidemic of injuries and ill fortune.
“I think that the way our team responded to his message — we had an aggressive bent to our game,” said Sweeney, who gave Cassidy a multi-year pact.
“We scored more goals, we didn’t lose defensive structure and foundation, our penalty kill remained to be tops in the league and our power play got better as the season went along,” added the GM. “To me, it spoke to the change that our team responded to, that our core players responded to and our young players responded to.
“I felt very comfortable moving forward that I felt Bruce would do a great job.”
Sweeney also credited the team’s assistant coaches, Jay Pandolfo, Joe Sacco and Bob Essensa, and indicated another assistant will be added.
“I think Bruce — our staff and Bruce — they really pushed the group to get to a higher pace,” said Sweeney. “I think our aggressive nature churned. I think (that was) something that I felt would be injected into our group right from Day 1 at practice, because I know what his core principles are. The group responded. The record speaks for it.”
Cassidy thanked his wife, Julie, and their kids for their support — and also the support he received from the Bruins’ core of veteran players. He didn’t exactly arrive as a neophyte when he ran his first practice — he’d been an NHL head coach with Washington 14 years earlier, he knew many B’s players from his eight years as head or assistant coach at Providence (AHL) and he’d been part of Julien’s staff all season.
And he found a receptive and open locker room when he took over.
“The core group, the veteran leadership, they gave me an opportunity to go in and earn their respect,” Cassidy said. “They bought into what we were selling for the most part. Not for the most part — 100 percent. One hundred percent, the veteran guys afforded me that opportunity and I can’t thank them enough. We’ve got some Stanley Cup champions in that room and it showed.
“We’re trying to build something together now. That’s the process going forward.”
Cassidy made some small changes in the B’s on-ice approach and in the roles for certain players. The changes in both those areas seemed to help immediately — as the team won its first four games and 12 of the first 15.
“We implemented a couple of things and off we went,” said the Ottawa native. “We talked right away about being a team that would play — and the term ‘play fast’ is getting thrown around a lot out there — but we were going to upgrade our transition game. We were going to move the puck quicker and attack. I guess that was our description of playing fast. I think it worked. It got our (defense) involved, so you start scoring and, obviously, that helped. People get excited about that — scoring goals and getting on offense.
“And I don’t think we lost a lot on the defensive side of things. As we went along, we tried to maintain that balance. So that was the message right away. Players bought in and we had success, and that obviously helps. Winning solves a lot of problems and puts a lot of smiles on people’s faces.”
Cassidy had a lot to do with those smiles — and with the excitement and anticipation that should blossom at his first B’s training camp.