{"id":537501,"date":"2026-04-02T23:53:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537501\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:53:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:53:54","slug":"tortorella-replacing-cassidy-is-what-golden-knights-hope-spark-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/537501\/","title":{"rendered":"Tortorella replacing Cassidy is what Golden Knights hope spark season"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 General manager Kelly McCrimmon said Golden Knights players had lost their spark, and that played into Sunday\u2019s surprising decision to fire coach Bruce Cassidy<\/a> and try to inject life into whatever remains of Vegas\u2019 season.<\/p>\n

John Tortorella replaces Cassidy for at least the rest of the remainder of this season and the playoffs. He met with the players Monday, and the organization hopes his presence will jump-start what players agreed was a needed energy boost.<\/p>\n

The Golden Knights take a three-game skid into Monday night\u2019s home game against Vancouver, which begins a final eight-game stretch. Vegas, which lost six of its past seven games, is in third place in the Pacific Division and in playoff position despite the recent downturn that includes a 5-10-2 record since the Olympic break through Sunday\u2019s play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the locker room had gone a little stale,\u201d captain Mark Stone said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t playing with that same emotion that we normally do. We have to bring ourselves into the fight a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tortorella joins Vegas for his 24th NHL season as a head coach. He was not in the league this year and was an assistant for the U.S. at the Milan Cortina Olympics when it won gold<\/a>. He coached Tampa Bay to the Stanley Cup title in 2004 and is 770-648-37 with five teams overall.<\/p>\n

A year ago, he was the one run out of an organization when Philadelphia fired Tortorella<\/a> with nine games to go. Now he\u2019s on the opposite end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been in the league a long time,\u201d the 67-year-old Tortorella said. \u201cWon some, lost some, did some dumb things along the way. To get an opportunity at this point in my career to come here, are you kidding me? I just want to help. That\u2019s what I told the boys today. We\u2019re going to do it together. A good man lost his job. That affects these guys. Don\u2019t think it doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tortorella is on an agreement to coach the team throughout the regular season and the playoffs should the Golden Knights make them. Then a decision will be made on a more long-term arrangement, with McCrimmon comparing it to the Rick Bowness situation in Columbus<\/a>. The Blue Jackets hired Bowness in January under similar circumstances.<\/p>\n

Tortorella said there wasn\u2019t enough time to make major changes and overload his players with information. He instead will make some tweaks, and he even let the assistant coaches put together the lines for the game against the Canucks. Tortorella said he was still learning names and is relying on the players to provide him the necessary information to move forward.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, McCrimmon said, was what he had in mind after making this decision. The Golden Knights, who spent about three months atop the Pacific Division, were built to compete for the Cup this season, most notably acquiring forward Mitch Marner<\/a> in a sign-and-trade with Toronto last offseason.<\/p>\n

The Golden Knights are just three years removed from winning the championship \u2014 and management approaches every season with the idea of doing all it can to eventually hoist the Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we didn\u2019t have the expectations and the belief in our team that we do, we probably would have let this thing ride out,\u201d McCrimmon said. \u201cWe like our team a lot, and we think our team has a chance to win. We needed to make this change to help that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The players agreed with that assessment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s one coach who can help our team a lot with eight games left and kind of turn things around, it would be (Tortorella),\u201d defenseman Noah Hanifin said. \u201cWe\u2019re excited about the opportunity to work with him and get back on track and get back to playing with some energy and some jam. It\u2019s a weird situation. It\u2019s not like it\u2019s halfway through the season. There\u2019s not a lot of time left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which makes it prove-it time for the Golden Knights.<\/p>\n

This move could look like anything from brilliant to a disaster, with plenty of possibilities in between.<\/p>\n

McCrimmon said the short amount of time remaining in the season didn\u2019t call for inaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a tight race right now,\u201d center Jack Eichel said. \u201cIt\u2019s the end of March, and we\u2019re heading into April. At the end of the day, you\u2019ve got to win hockey games this time of year. I think for all the guys in the room, we could be better on the ice on a night in and night out basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2014 General manager Kelly McCrimmon said Golden Knights players had lost their spark, and that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[762,1280,62,149,5317,5,1041,348,1596,1040,533,13257,3328,7763,4,292,2833,1274,2225,5188,2139,562,43,2583,893,74,39,5316],"class_list":{"0":"post-537501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vegas-golden-knights","8":"tag-bruce-cassidy","9":"tag-fl-state-wire","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-golden-knights","12":"tag-goldenknights","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-jack-eichel","15":"tag-john-tortorella","16":"tag-kelly-mccrimmon","17":"tag-mark-stone","18":"tag-mitch-marner","19":"tag-nevada","20":"tag-new-york","21":"tag-new-york-city","22":"tag-nhl","23":"tag-nhl-hockey","24":"tag-noah-hanifin","25":"tag-nv-state-wire","26":"tag-oh-state-wire","27":"tag-ohio","28":"tag-pa-state-wire","29":"tag-pennsylvania","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-sports-transactions","32":"tag-vancouver","33":"tag-vegas","34":"tag-vegas-golden-knights","35":"tag-vegasgoldenknights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116337814009567457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537501","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=537501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}