John Tortorella is the new coach of the Vegas Golden Knights. His era begins now, and a team’s hopes and dreams for the current season hang in the balance.
Eight regular season games to go and a playoff berth remains unsecured. GM Kelly McCrimmon cited a lack of spirit and energy as catalysts for removing Bruce Cassidy from the head coach post.
The decision weighed heavily on McCrimmon but in the end he felt it was necessary for this team to get back on track and for this season to not go down as a missed opportunity.
Monday morning was a whirlwind with media availabilities for McCrimmon, Tortorella and a selection of veteran players.
Here’s a sampling of key quotes from the people involved in this decision and those who will determine its success.
KELLY McCRIMMON:
Yesterday was a hard day for the organization. I’ve said before, as a manager, if you’re going to do your job well, you have to make hard decisions on good people. On behalf of Bill Foley, George McPhee, and myself, I’d like to thank Bruce for his commitment and contribution to our organization over his four years here. He was the exact right coach at the exact right time for our team, and he helped us become Stanley Cup champions.
I’ve enjoyed working with Bruce. We had a great relationship. I don’t think we had an argument or a disagreement in four years. I wish him and Julie the best. He’ll work again very soon and be very successful when that happens, so I wanted to say thank you, Bruce.
Just in my opening statement, I’m going speak to why now and why John. With the first part of that, ‘25–‘26 has been a challenging season for our team. Like a lot of teams, like all teams, a very compressed schedule. We had eight Olympians, and would have been nine if William Karlsson had been able to go. It puts a lot of demands on the players. Bruce, as well, who was part of the (Canadian) staff.
I think somewhere along the way, we lost our spirit and we lost our energy as a team. We went into the Olympic break in first place. We’d been in first place for 96 days. Since then, we’re 5-10-2. Since a seven-game winning streak in January, we’re 8-15-4. We’ve gone from first to second to third to fighting for a playoff spot.
We waited as long as we could on this. We see lots of positive signs in spurts in our game, but we just felt that we needed to bring a different person in to lead our team at this time.
In John Tortorella, when we’re at our best, we play hard, we play fast, we get on teams early. I think that lines up with John’s philosophy as a coach. Defensively, we’re very much aligned with how his teams play.
I think that John has great passion, great energy. He’s a great communicator. He’s very respected in the industry, experienced, and comfortable in his own skin. I think he’s going to give our team a spark. That’s what I feel.
Our team, if we didn’t have the expectations and the belief in our team that we do, we probably would have let this thing ride out. We like our team a lot. We like our team a lot, and we think our team has a chance to win, and we needed to make this change to help that happen.
REPORTER:
In the past, you’ve had to make two other tough coaching changes that were pretty polarizing. It seemed in the short term they worked out really well. Did that inform or make you confident to make this move again?
KELLY McCRIMMON:
Well, it’s what I touched on earlier, that you need to make hard decisions. The easiest thing in the world is to do nothing, right? We wouldn’t be having this press conference if that was the path that we chose.
I think when we’ve changed coaches along the way, I’m going to say each time, it was likely viewed by this room as being unpopular or not the right time. I think in each case, the decisions were good ones.
We’re living it every day, so, I think that we have the information. We’re working with it every day, and that’s used in terms of how we make the decisions. There’s a lot of dialogue, to the question earlier, between George and myself. Our pro scouting staff is always evaluating our team. When we have meetings, there’s open discussions about what we like and where we need to be better. Those are things that go into how we run our hockey ops.
REPORTER:
When you met with the leadership group, what was their reaction? What does that reaction look like tonight, aside from two points?
KELLY McCRIMMON:
I think you’re going to see a positive bump in our play. That’s what we expect.
The leadership group would feel, and when I say I met with the leadership group, I also met with the entire team, I think the leadership group would feel similarly to me. I think they all had Bruce positively impact them as players. I think they had respect for the person, as I do, and yet recognized that we needed to change something. We needed to change something.
With that, it’s on everybody to do a little bit more, right? It’s not going to be just because a new head coach walked through the door. We have to respond, each guy, in a positive way.
JOHN TORTORELLA:
Yeah, we're not going to make many changes. In fact, I was texting Butchie (Bruce) last night when I was flying here and thanked him for having the team the way it is right now, with me getting an opportunity to coach now with him gone. So just remember, the guy that left here was a pretty damn good coach. So I feel very fortunate coming into this situation, and I am not going to upset and fill the players with information. I have a few points of emphasis that we'll go over as a team. I already did this morning in our first meeting, just about mindset. Odds and ends that I'll just keep with the team for now. But that's basically where it goes.
REPORTER:
Starts have been a little bit slow. Can you diagnose what the problem is and what you could change to fix it?
JOHN TORTORELLA:
Yeah, I haven't diagnosed it. It's a tough one to diagnose. We'll certainly bring it up. It's just basically a reminder. I tell you, the biggest part of hockey now, I don't think it's the X's and O's. I do think it's your mind. That's a readiness. I think they've been told a few times about their starts, I'm sure. I'm sure you guys have written about it a little bit. We'll remind them, but also respect them. They know where they're at here now in the standings, right? They know where they're at, and it's up for the coaching staff to just get them together and be ready to start these games and go from there.
MARK STONE:
Yeah, obviously disappointing. The team is not where we want to be, not where we want to be playing. You obviously take a little bit of presence as a player that when these decisions happen, you take it a little bit on yourselves too, right? But it's a new day. I'm excited to get going. I still feel like we're in a pretty good spot in the standings. We have eight games to get dialed in and have a push for the playoffs.
REPORTER:
What do you anticipate it'll be like to have a new voice with only eight games remaining in the regular season?
MARK STONE:
Yeah, it's different. I've never been through this at this time of the year, but it's a new energy. It's a new voice, like you said. John's excited to be here. We have a good team. We have good players. So, I think he's excited to see what he can do with us.
REPORTER:
The message from Kelly was that this team seemed to have lost the spirit and the energy. Do you agree with that? How do you get that back?
MARK STONE:
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you can just need a new voice. I think the locker room had gone a little stale. We weren't playing with that same emotion that we normally do. I think you saw when we play Edmonton, or another rival team, there's energy. The game's rough, kind of, but we haven't been bringing ourselves into the fight. So I think that's probably what he's attesting to. The same with Washington. It was a pretty flat game until we get a crazy shorthanded sequence that brought us life into the game. But early on, we're not starting with that emotion. I think that's probably the mindset going forward is to start the game with that kind of emotion.
REPORTER:
What's your reaction here over the last 24 hours?
JACK EICHEL:
Wake up call, I think, for the group. We have a really good team in here. We obviously haven't been performing to our capability and expectations. I think that it's a message that the management believes in us, but we have to start playing better.
REPORTER:
John described you as a beauty, just with your experience with him with USA Hockey. How would you describe John Tortorella?
JACK EICHEL:
Emotional, passionate. Obviously, I had an experience with him last year at the 4 Nations and then again at the Olympics. So, you know, both were really good experiences. If you talk to guys that have played for him in longer periods of time, you know, they all say the same thing. He cares about his players, and he's emotional and he's invested in it. I think that's great for us.
REPORTER:
How do you want to see your team respond to the change?
JACK EICHEL:
More energy and more spirit, more enthusiasm. Feels like we've been maybe lacking a few of those things recently. I think just collectively as a group, just take another step here. We've got eight games before the playoffs. Obviously, we're in a tight race right now. We've got to start winning games, and that's what's important. It's the end of March. We're heading into April here, and at the end of the day, you have to win hockey games this time of year. It'll be important for us to do that. I think for all the guys in the room, we all can be better on the ice on a night-in and night-out basis. That'll be important.
REPORTER:
You mentioned spirit and Kelly mentioned spirit. Did it seem like Bruce's message maybe doesn't get into the group?
JACK EICHEL:
Well, you know what? I think whenever a coach is let go, it always falls on the players. At the end of the day, we're the ones that go out there and perform every night. We're all grown men, and you should be able to go out there and do your job. Yeah, I mean, sometimes things happen over the course of long relationships. That's just how things go. But, yeah, I don't know. It just seemed like maybe our energy and some of our spirit had been lost a little bit recently. So, you know, we love the group in here. An awesome group of people to come to work with every day and an unbelievable team to be a part of. I think we have a lot of really high-character people who care about each other. So, I think all those things are really important.
