{"id":460231,"date":"2026-02-16T22:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/460231\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T22:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:46:07","slug":"golden-knights-coach-bruce-cassidy-returns-to-italy-for-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/460231\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy returns to Italy for Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LAS VEGAS (<a href=\"http:\/\/fox5vegas.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"http:\/\/fox5vegas.com\/\">FOX5<\/a>) \u2014 Team Canada is a frontrunner for a gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics, and helping lead that charge is Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">While spending time in Italy may be a new experience for most of Canada\u2019s players, it is not for the Canadian assistant coach. Cassidy spent nearly four years of his playing days overseas in the small Italian village of Alleghe, not far from the home of the 2026 Winter Games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe geography was unbelievable; I was in the mountains more, where Cortina is in the mountains, half an hour from there, where the skiing is,\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cI didn\u2019t ski, obviously, wasn\u2019t allowed, you\u2019re playing hockey, but I was around it enough, and it\u2019s beautiful that part of it. I\u2019m looking forward to getting back and seeing a little bit of that, but I don\u2019t know how much you\u2019ll see from there in Milan. It\u2019s going to be a work trip more than anything, so the touristy part for me, unfortunately, I don\u2019t think will happen, but I don\u2019t mind that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">From NHL draft pick to Italian hockey<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The former 18th overall pick by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 1983 draft played in just 36 NHL games due to a knee injury. After winning a championship in 1990 in the International Hockey League, Cassidy left North America and signed with the Alleghe Hockey Club, playing 88 games over the course of three seasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">It\u2019s now been more than three decades since Cassidy last took the ice in Italy. Looking back, he says his best memories came away from the rink. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cSome of the experience was non-hockey related, just a new culture, the language,\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cWhere I was in northern Italy, there wasn\u2019t a lot of English, let\u2019s put it that way. I went to a French school, so French and Italian were very similar, so I tried to learn the language. There are a lot of dialects up there because it\u2019s in the north, and there is a lot of German-speaking people, that part of it was great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Adapting to Italian culture<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Cassidy said the everyday life adjustments were significant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThey used to shut down in the afternoon, I don\u2019t know if they still do that like some of those warm-weather South American countries, that was getting used to, eating lunch,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fast food convenience of the United States not there, so you got to get used to their ways when you\u2019re over there and have to adapt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">That adaptability lesson, Cassidy believes, will be crucial for Olympic success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cAdaptability, teams that adapt, you hear about the rink and the size of the dressing rooms, the teams that adapt and go over there and take care of hockey and not worry about the amenities that they\u2019d have here during the season will probably be better off to be perfectly honest, that\u2019s how I see it,\u201d he said. \u201cGetting around, the timing, all that stuff changes from what I\u2019ve heard and I\u2019ve been there, so I think there will be some snafus in those areas. That\u2019s something with the players we\u2019ll try and get them focused on, not worrying about the little things, just worrying about the task at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Gold is the goal<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The task at hand is gold. Prior to leaving for the tournament, Cassidy was asked how an experience like his first Olympics compares to battling for and winning a Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt will be a better answered question when it\u2019s over and done there, and you hopefully come back a winner,\u201d Cassidy said. \u201cStanley Cup you can\u2019t replace, never replace it as a coach, so that\u2019s number one. Hopefully, it will be number two, three, and four, as many as you can get, I would think, then I think the Olympics would be there as well. You\u2019re representing your country, best players in the world, all the best players are there, so I think it would be quite the accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 KVVU. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (FOX5) \u2014 Team Canada is a frontrunner for a gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[18566,149,5317,5,4,74,39,5316],"class_list":["post-460231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vegas-golden-knights","tag-azfamily","tag-golden-knights","tag-goldenknights","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-vegas","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-vegasgoldenknights"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116082743036955219","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}