Bruce Cassidy’s coaching career began a quarter mile north of the St. John’s River in Jacksonville, Florida, of all places.

The Ottawa, Ontario, native had reached the end of his playing career in 1996 after suffering a knee injury during his final season with the ECHL’s Indianapolis Ice. The Ice’s owner, Horn Chen, then asked the shrewd defenseman if he’d be interested in coaching another ECHL team he owned at the time—the Jacksonville Lizard Kings.

Cassidy jumped at the chance, but his tenure went about as well as you’d expect with a team called the Lizard Kings. “There’s a GM, I think he was 30 or 31, my age at the time, [who] basically said, ‘Here’s the hockey team. I sell tickets. Here’s your team,” Cassidy reminisces.

The Lizard Kings went 15-25-10 in Cassidy’s first season at the helm, but the experience meant everything to the new coach. He learned about every role from an organizational standpoint and rebuilt the team, calling other coaches around the ECHL for input and implementing what he felt were the best strategies.

Cassidy improved Jacksonville to a 35-29-6 record in his second and final season there.

“It might be the best thing ever to start that way,” Cassidy tells the Weekly. “You’re just diving in, you’re coaching, you’re managing the roster. [You’re also] the GM. You make the trades, you negotiate contracts, you run practice. I thought it was great for me at the time.”

Cassidy has come a long way since his early days in the business coaching obscure minor-league franchises (after Jacksonville, he went on to the Trenton Titans and Grand Rapids Griffins). He always remained patient, never wavering from his desire to stay involved in the game.

Cassidy got his first run in the NHL in 2002, when then-general manager George McPhee—now Vegas’ president of hockey operations—tapped him to coach a star-studded Washington Capitals team that included Jaromir Jagr, Peter Bondra and Olaf Kolzig.

“I learned about NHL life,” Cassidy says. “I was a player that was up and down. I was never in the NHL long enough to know what it’s all about, all the demands—media, travel, hotel, the access to people. I learned that that’s important. There’s a certain way to conduct yourself the right way.”

The Caps finished second in their division with 92 points in Cassidy’s first year but lost in the first round of the playoffs, and then began the following season 8-16-1, leading to his dismissal. But Cassidy remained undeterred. He believed he had the demeanor to be a successful long-term NHL coach.

“It’s funny, when I was a player I thought coaches were always grumpy, always going to yell at someone,” Cassidy says. “That just wasn’t my personality, and I didn’t want to be that. I always got along with every one of my coaches, I’d be respectful. I just didn’t know if that’s what I wanted to be.”

Cassidy’s approach combines styles of various coaches he played under. He says he took the most from Daryl Sutter in Indianapolis and Brian Kilrea Jr. with the Ottawa 67s. “And there were a couple other guys I played for where I didn’t like what they did,” Cassidy says, “so I said, ‘OK, I’m not going to do that.’”

Cassidy prides himself on being honest with his players, even when it’s difficult. That came across this preseason, once when he called on goaltender Adin Hill to improve after giving up seven goals to San Jose and again when Cassidy spoke critically of the fourth line after a win over Arizona.

The Golden Knights have been accepting of that accountability even as they also adjust to a new system on the ice.

“We got a little bit complacent last year,” Vegas captain Mark Stone says. “You’re going to go through change with every coach. I don’t think it’s changed a ton.”

After Washington, Cassidy became an assistant coach for the Chicago Blackhawks and then head coach for the Kingston Frontenacs of the Ontario Hockey League. In 2008, the Boston Bruins hired him as an assistant coach for the American Hockey League’s Providence Bruins.

Then-general manager Peter Chiarelli knew Cassidy from his days in Grand Rapids. It also helped that Cassidy grew up loving the Bruins, and that his wife, Julie, was from nearby New Jersey.

Cassidy became head coach in 2011 and ultimately stayed with Providence for eight seasons. During that time, Bruce and Julie’s two children—daughter Shannon and son Cole—were born.

And then, at last, Cassidy got his second chance as an NHL head coach in 2017, when he replaced Claude Julien in Boston. Cassidy led the Bruins to an 18-8-1 run down the stretch to make the playoffs—the first of six straight trips that included a run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2019. He looks back at those years fondly.

“In Washington, it was just hockey, and your balance is off a bit,” Cassidy says. “There wasn’t as much of that the second time around in Boston, so you could go home, put hockey behind you, you’ve got a family, [so] go to gymnastics or preschool hockey, doing different things.”

The Bruins came within a hair of claiming their first Cup since 2011, losing in seven games to a St. Louis Blues team captained by Cassidy’s new top defenseman in Vegas, Alex Pietrangelo. Yet despite consistent success under Cassidy, Bruins general manager Don Sweeney fired him on June 7 after a first-round playoff exit. Cassidy finished with a 245-108-46 record with the team.

“I worked 14 years with Don … [and] even though he’s the guy that let me go … I learned a lot.” Cassidy says. “There’s no bitterness there at all. It was just time.”

Cassidy joins a Golden Knights team that missed the playoffs for the first time last season after reaching the conference finals the two prior years. He and Vegas share the same goal: a first Stanley Cup.

“They were disappointed the way their year ended, I was disappointed with the way my year ended,” Cassidy says. “It’s not easy to win, [but] they’ve got guys in the room who understand what it takes. You’re not coming in telling guys something they don’t already know.”

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