Main points (in order)

Cassidy was very hard on his players, and even during the 2023 Cup run season he got into battles with some of his players.

He alludes to some of his assistants leaving because he is hard to work with. [Friedman doesn’t say a name but my immediate thought is Misha Donskov leaving for Dallas?]

During the 2024-25 season Cassidy held a meeting with his players and some of the players did not take it kindly. At exit interviews after the Oilers series loss some players complained about that meeting, but Kelly McCrimmon stuck to his coach.

As far as 2025-26 goes, the Vegas players tuned out Cassidy. Even though the underlying numbers make it seem like it’s not a coaching problem, they clearly aren’t receiving the message anymore.

9 comments

  1. Wasn’t this an issue in Boston? i remember seeing on social media from bruins insiders and fans that the players had issues with him in this same regard.

  2. Cassidy has a reputation for being a hard-ass who forces players to take accountability, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

    So what did we do? Hire a guy with an even worse reputation for the exact same problem.

    I actually understand letting Cassidy go even though I’m not a fan of it. What I don’t understand is bringing in Tortorella as the replacement. Like, if the issue with Cassidy is he’s “difficult to work with,” how do you replace him with one of the only guys with an even bigger reputation for being difficult to work with?

  4. This is why sinbins take is so wrong, theres a lot more to coaching that just Xs and Os and if he lost the room it doesnt matter how good he at that part of coaching. I was hoping he had learned from what happened in Boston and Washington, I guess he didnt.

  5. It’s amazing the lengths some people will go to, the players, to avoid accountability.

  6. Fine. I get it. If the players are tuning him out hence the sloppy performance all season, then that makes sense.

    But WHY TORTORELLA?? If these primadonnas thought Cassidy was a hard-ass, oh boy….

  7. Really big fan turnout at practice today. Like weekend sized crowd. No Torts appearance.

  8. I’m not even flabbergasted by the firing Cassidy part. Things aren’t working. Coach is usually the casualty, especially with this many elite players.

    But there’s 8 games left, none of the problems we have weren’t here in January. Or February. Or beginning of March.

  9. I have to think that morale would be better if they could get a save from their goalies now and then. League avg tending would probably have us in 1st easily.

    But you can’t coach a goalie into making more saves so Cassidy has no choice but to get his skaters to make up the difference, and clearly they aren’t on board. Plenty of blame to be shared by everyone here, front office included.

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