Cassidy Disagrees With Narrative On Why He Was Fired

Former Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy and the Stanley Cup were in Milton, MA, then on to Cape Cod Thursday for Cassidy’s day with the cherished trophy.

The first stop for Lord Stanley and Bruce Cassidy was to launch the Cassidy Murray Foundation, which was formed to honor the memory of Cassidy’s daughter Shannon’s best friend Cassidy Murray, who was killed in a tragic tubing accident in Aruba in 2022. On Wednesday, the Vegas Golden Knights bench boss was doing the radio and TV rounds to promote the event and discuss winning the Stanley Cup. Of course, his unceremonious and sudden exit as head coach of the Boston Bruins came up, and Cassidy once again dispelled the narrative that the Bruins fired him because he couldn’t develop young players.

“I don’t know (if I did) a lot. I always disliked that narrative,” Cassidy said on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Wednesday morning. “When I took over the Bruins, we brought in (Matt) Grzelcyk, (Brandon) Carlo, (Charlie) McAvoy, (Jeremy) Lauzon, (Connor) Clifton, (Jake) DeBrusk, (Anders) Bjork, (Danton) Heinen. We brought in a lot of young guys. Some of them had success, others we moved on from for different reasons. But there were a lot of young players. And then it continued right to the end. I thought we brought in some more young guys, and David Pastrnak was a young guy then.

For me, I thought we coached those guys well, for the most part. They had success, and they’re probably going to be the foundation of the Bruins going forward, some of them. And I’ve kept in touch with some of them. So I don’t know if (the narrative) is accurate, I think it’s more the messaging that some players didn’t like, but in terms of making them better players I thought we did a good job as a staff with that. So that’s what I took to Vegas.”

Bruce Cassidy brings the Stanley Cup back to the bay state #WCVB pic.twitter.com/YIp6cloe7X

— Matt Reed (@MattReedNews) July 13, 2023

That being said, Cassidy said he did take the criticism and channel it into a positive by applying the lessons learned with the Boston Bruins into coaching the Vegas Golden Knights. Still, he’s not going to be the blunt and honest Cassidy that the Boston media embraced.

“Maybe in today’s game you can’t be as direct, especially with the media, but Boston is a little different market,” Cassidy acknowledged. “They asked a question, and I answered it. That I took a little bit with me: How does it affect everyone else? Be a little more careful. I’ve never been a vanilla guy answering questions, and that part will probably always stay with me.”