Bruce Cassidy called himself "a little bit of a hockey nerd" on Wednesday morning. The only quibble we might have is with the use of the word little.
Cassidy, who is Bruce to his wife, dad to his two kids, and Butch to just about everyone else, is a smart guy. He’s well-read and well-travelled and can weigh in on whatever subject is being discussed.
But at his core, Cassidy is a hockey guy. He loves the game and hot-stoving on the topic of the day within the sport is a favorite past time of his.
Whether it’s in the hallway outside his office with the team broadcasters or in the hotel lobby with whatever members of the VGK traveling party are within earshot, Cassidy is generous with his time and wisdom.
An elite talent in junior hockey, injuries cut his NHL career short. Rather than starring in the greatest league in the world, Cassidy traipsed around the globe chasing the puck and his dream. A hockey version of Bull Durham’s Crash Davis, if you will.
Halifax, Saginaw, Indianapolis, Germany and Italy were all playing stops interspersed by 36 games in the NHL.
When the calls to play finally stopped, Cassidy set aside his stick for a whistle and began chasing the Stanley Cup as a coach. That didn’t just get handed to him either. Jacksonville, Trenton, Kingston, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids and Providence in the minors as well as Washington and Boston in the NHL all came before that steamy night in Vegas when the Cup was finally put into his hands.
Cassidy has his scars, literally and figuratively, from a life in hockey.
All this has added up to a formidable record in the NHL of 445-230-9-3 for a .640 points percentage as bench boss. His name is on the Stanley Cup and he has been coach of the year in both the AHL and NHL. The 60-year-old is good at his job.
And, yes, he’s a definitely a hockey nerd.
On Wednesday, he addressed the media on whatever Golden Knights queries they could fire at him.
On his team’s much-improved penalty kill:
Cassidy: In a perfect world, you want all three phases of offense going and if you're not getting them and if you're going to win, you need something at the other side of it right? So, the PK could be it and it usually is. On the PK, not only do you keep pucks out of your net but when you're going well on the PK, it breaks the other team’s spirit a bit offensively, so it leaks into the five-on-five game sometimes. It probably shouldn’t, but I think that’s normal behavior for the skill guys, they're not feeling their hands or not feeling it offensively, so that's what the PK can do. Really put momentum on your side as opposed to giving it to their power play, even if they don't score, some momentum.
On his team earning its first shutout of the year, a 1-0 win over Detroit on Tuesday:
Cassidy: We want to play well defensively every night, that way you're in the game. I didn't think we were poor offensively, the analytics backed that up. We had a lot of chances around their net front, we just couldn't quite corral the puck or make the last play, but we were inside more than we have been, so that was the good news. Was it the best one? The Calgary games were pretty [good], I thought against Carolina at home we were very good, and if I'm not mistaken, probably in Carolina as well in terms of what we gave up. So, it's right there with those games. It’s a shutout, so it's always going to look like the best one and Detroit is a good offensive team. They’ve been scoring some goals and they've been finding ways to win, so it wasn't a freebie. So yes, we can build off it. Akira Schmid should feel good about himself as he was solid in there when he needed to be. I think the whole D-core should, I thought we kept the game clean for the most part. Better puck possession, so we weren't spending a lot of time in our end and our forwards were fresh to kill plays in our end. A lot of good things that way.
On how he plans to utilize his goalies over the next stretch of games:
Cassidy: We’ve got Tampa and Anaheim this week and the plan was to play each guy [Schmid and Lindbom] one game. They're both good offensive teams. Anaheim is hot right now and we all know Tampa can score goals. So, we'll see how that plays out, we'll announce it tomorrow, but they're each going to play a game. After that, I don't know if you can give just one guy the ball because we've got four in the next week, and a back-to-back on the road. I think it's conducive now to use both guys for the most part, so that's probably how it's going to look.
On using analytics and advanced statistics:
Cassidy: Well, we meet after every 10-game segment if the schedule allows us to, and then we go over it with the people upstairs. I think I called them nerds once got in trouble, so I will not call them that anymore. They give us the data and then we digest it. What we don't want, I don't want to coach the team with the data. I want them to give me the data, and we'll have a discussion on it. Then, if there's a deeper dive, "here’s the data for this matchup, okay how about if you separate the one part from the other, and how does that change things?" They're very good at digging in to get more detail specific and certain areas. I'll tell you this, from every segment you're probably going through different areas, right? If you're not scoring, why not? Are we getting the chances? Where are they coming from? What lines are functioning well? Sometimes it's as simple as, okay the expected goals are three times what they're actually getting. So, don't change a thing, the pucks are going to go in eventually. There's a little bit of that that goes into it, you can't just look at the goals or plus-minus, whatever you want to sort of look at. So, that's where we look at it. We also get a report after every game that I look through. Try to look at certain [areas], zone denial, zone entries, that's one I think for our rush game we're always looking at. Odd-man rushes for and against. Are we getting into the zone clean a lot or we're being forced to dump? If we're being forced to dump, is it the way the team's playing us, or are we just not executing clean enough through there? Every area of the ice I could probably talk to you for 20 minutes about, but you'd be bored to death. It’s hard to do every area, so we try to focus on different ones, and then the last part of that is that there's an obvious red flag we'll look at. Usually, you should see that with your eye test to be honest and sometimes the analytics back up exactly what you're thinking, so now you know you've got to fix something.
