6 centers Bruins could target if Bergeron, Krejci retire
One year ago, Bruce Cassidy’s coaching career hit a low point when he got fired from his dream job, head coach of the Boston Bruins.
On Tuesday night, Cassidy reached the highest of highs, leading his new team, the Vegas Golden Knights, to his and their first Stanley Cup. The Golden Knights finished off the Matthew Tkachuk-less Florida Panthers with a lopsided 9-3 win in Game 5, capping off a dominant postseason that saw them finish off every opponent in fewer than seven games.
Cassidy will undoubtedly be the Boston connection who generates the most discussion and strongest reactions around these parts. Those who already thought the Bruins made a mistake by firing him now have all the ammunition in the world to back up their case. If you think it’s a bad look for the Bruins players who had reportedly grown tired of Cassidy’s often blunt criticism and preferred a new “voice,” well, it’s hard to argue against you right now.
I shared my opinion on this weeks ago, and I’m not going to change it now. I think all of the following statements can be true at once:
-- Cassidy was and is a terrific coach, one of the best in the NHL.
-- There was enough tension between him and Bruins players that change was warranted, and pretty much every general manager in every sport is going to change the coach, not the players, in that situation.
-- There’s no guarantee and little reason to believe the Bruins would have won the Cup if they still had Cassidy instead of Jim Montgomery.
All that said, there’s no denying it’s a tough pill to swallow for the Bruins, seeing their former coach lift the Cup in his first season with his new team, all while they’ve been sitting at home for a month and a half after their stunning first-round collapse.
For Cassidy, it’s a great story. New England truly was home for him, as he had spent eight years coaching in Providence before the six in Boston. Uprooting his family and moving across the country wasn’t easy, at least not initially. It probably feels a whole lot easier, and completely worth it, right about now.
Cassidy, however, is not the only Golden Knight with Boston connections. Here’s a look at the others:
-- North Chelmsford native and former Boston University Terrier Jack Eichel wrote quite the redemption story of his own this season, winning the Cup in his first career postseason appearance. Eichel never even sniffed the playoffs during six frustrating seasons in Buffalo, and just missed out during his first year in Vegas, too. He lost the better part of two seasons to a neck injury, with a major disagreement over how to treat it contributing to his Buffalo exit, before finally returning to a full-time player this season.
Eichel led the Golden Knights in scoring in both the regular season and postseason, capping things off with three assists in Game 5 to finish with 26 points in 22 playoff games. Linemate Jonathan Marchessault won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, but it could've just as easily been Eichel. The questions about whether a team could win with Eichel as one of its cornerstones always seemed unfair given how little talent the Sabres put around him, but now he has emphatically shut up his critics once and for all.
-- Former Bruin Reilly Smith is another key part of Vegas’ core. In fact, he’s been part of that core since the Golden Knights were born in 2017, one of six players on this year’s Cup winner who has been there since the franchise’s inaugural season. Smith just continues to be a really solid middle-six forward year after year, recording his sixth 50-point season this year and adding 14 points in 22 playoff games, including a goal and an assist Tuesday night.
Ironically, it was an all-time blunder by the Panthers that sent Smith and Marchessault to Vegas in the 2017 expansion draft for just a fourth-round pick, a decision still burning Florida to this day. Before that, the Bruins sent Smith to Florida in 2015 in what turned out to be a poor trade of their own. The B’s got Jimmy Hayes, who put up just 34 points across his two seasons in Boston. Smith, meanwhile, proved that he wasn’t just a product of playing with Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand, and he is now a Stanley Cup champion.
-- Phil Kessel is now a three-time Stanley Cup champion. Yep, let that one sink in. The former Bruin played a minimal part for Vegas in the playoffs, appearing in four games in the first round before serving as a healthy scratch for the last three rounds. The 35-year-old winger did play all 82 games in the regular season, though, putting up a respectable 36 points while playing bottom-six minutes. It’s been 14 years since the Bruins traded Kessel, which feels like ancient history at this point. Still, given some of the questions that surrounded him at that time and during his tenure in Toronto, it’s safe to say he’s getting the last laugh as a now-three-time champ.
-- Jonathan Quick might be a stretch as a “Boston connection,” but he is from Connecticut and went to UMass, and he is also now a three-time Cup winner. Craig Cunningham, who spent four years in the Bruins organization from 2011-15, is a pro scout for Vegas. His playing career was ended by a terrifying cardiac arrest before a Tucson Roadrunners game in 2016 that resulted in his lower left leg needing to be amputated, so you love to see him win. Former Bruins radio voice Dave Goucher and former Bruins defenseman Shane Hnidy make up the Golden Knights’ TV broadcast team.
-From the what-if department, Mark Stone is now a Stanley Cup champion as Vegas’ captain after scoring a hat trick in Game 5, which makes you think back to the 2019 trade deadline. That’s when the Golden Knights acquired Stone from Ottawa, but the Bruins were heavily linked to him in trade rumors at that time, too. Stone would have fit an obvious need on a Boston team that didn’t have a second-line right wing. Maybe the B’s finish off the Blues in the Cup Final that spring if they had Stone. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good dwelling on it now, but you do wonder. In hindsight, Vegas really gave up very little for Stone – the centerpiece was Erik Brannstrom, who has developed into a perfectly fine defenseman, but nothing special.
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