BOSTON BRUINS OFFSEASON QUOTES GENERAL MANAGER DON SWEENEY and HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY Thursday, April 27, 2017
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BOSTON BRUINS OFFSEASON QUOTES GENERAL MANAGER DON SWEENEY AND HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY Thursday, April 27, 2017 BOSTON BRUINS GENERAL MANAGER DON SWEENEY AND HEAD COACH BRUCE CASSIDY END-OF-SEASON PRESS CONFERENCE Opening statement from Don Sweeney… DS: First off, I want to thank everybody for joining us today. The Bruins are very excited to be naming Bruce Cassidy the 28th head coach of the Boston Bruins. Despite the season abruptly ending on Sunday, I felt very comfortable moving forward quickly to name Bruce the head coach. I think that, to tell you the truth, I think Bruce summarized it very well the other morning. When we sat down and finalized it, when I said congrats, he said, ‘that’s good, because that was a long, hard interview.’ I think that the way our team responded to his message – we had an aggressive bent to our game. We scored more goals, we didn’t lose defensive structure and our foundation, our penalty kill remained to be top in the league, and our power play got better as the season went along. To me, it spoke to the change that our team responded to, that our core players responded to, and our young players responded to. I felt very comfortable moving forward that I felt Bruce would do a great job. Overall, I think our staff did a very good job. We have a lot of work to do as an organization, still. We want to become a deeper, more talented team from top to bottom. Taking one step forward, in my opinion, is not successful. It’s a good step, but we have work to do in a lot of areas that we want to continue to get better. The commitment to winning in this organization, it’s the first thing that our core players who have won and have lifted the Stanley Cup, it’s the first thing they ask. They make sure the commitment, top to bottom, is there. Our younger players need to continue to understand that, and they need to grow. It’s great to have young players and you’re committing to it. But, if they’re not good enough and they don’t deserve to be there, that’s not a good plan to have. So, we need to make sure that they’re well prepared, whether they take the extra time in Providence – going to the playoffs they’re going to. I’ll drive down to Wilkes-Barre and watch them play today. So, it’s all-important. It’s important to the steps to get back to where we want to be. We have a lot of decisions to make from internal decisions of current players, whether they’ll be restricted or unrestricted, we have some expansion draft planning to continue to do, a review for the organizational meetings standpoint where we meet with our scouts – and I go back to what Adam Creighton, one of our pro scouts, said to everybody at the table at the trade deadline – he said, we need to be a deeper, more talented team, and that’s the bottom line. That’s the onus; it’s on right here, right in this chair. But today, I’m very excited to be sitting with Bruce and moving forward with him as our head coach. Opening statement from Bruce Cassidy… BC: Well, first, I’d like to thank the Jacobs family, Cam Neely, and Don Sweeney for giving me this opportunity to continue a proud tradition here to coach an Original Six franchise. I’ve made no secret that I grew up adoring this team and I’m very proud, honored, and privileged to be a part of it, and to be named the head coach. My family, my wife Julie, my children; their support has been tremendous. It’s crucial along the way. To be quite honest, the core group, the veteran leadership, they gave me an opportunity to go in and earn their respect, and they bought into what we were selling for the most part. Not for the most part, 100 percent. 100 percent, the veteran guys, they afforded me that opportunity and I can’t thank them enough. We’ve got some Stanley Cup champions in that room and it showed with high character players and I was very thankful for that. From there, we’re trying to build something together now. That’s the process going forward. On if Sweeney believes Cassidy got the most out of his team… DS: Well, I was very happy for our core players and our younger players to experience – we had several players that played in the playoffs for their very first time. Had we continued in years past, David Pastrnak probably would have been more prepared this year if we had made it last year and the previous year. So, I think it was an important step and I think that our players, our core players in particular, some of them had tremendous seasons. Their demand to make sure our younger players sort of catch up and play the right way – we pushed the group. I think Bruce, in particular, our staff and Bruce, they really pushed the group to get to a higher pace. I think our aggressive nature churned. I think something that I felt would be injected into our group right from day one at practice because I know what his core principles are, and I think the group responded. The record speaks for it. We didn’t get the job done, and we have work to do. On what Cassidy learned as a coach and as a person between head coaching stints… BC: Well, a lot transpires. I mean, I assume you’re referring to Washington. It’s been 14 years. You grow as a person, as an individual, your personal life, you become a parent – so, that will help you in every walk of life. As a coach, I look mostly at the time in Providence to be a part of the Bruins culture – I was part of the Black Aces when they won the Stanley Cup in 2011. It did wonders, I thought, for getting acquainted with the ways of the NHL, even though I was on the outside looking in, you still feel a part of it – the togetherness required, everything that goes into it. But, being down there, again, it’s just what goes into being a head coach and what goes into being involved with the Bruins family. I thought that was the biggest takeaway from my perspective and to what I can bring here as a head coach and did through the past two-plus months. On where the roster needs to improve the most… DS: Well, I think that the middle part of our lineup, the consistency, scoring, and depth, I think is an area. Whether that’s second, third, wherever those pieces fall into place, I think that’s an area we need to continue to get better at. I believe our top line is one of the best lines in the league. We expect David Krejci, who should be commended for coming off hip surgery and playing 82 games. But, he probably got off to a slower stat that we would have liked, and we missed him in the playoffs. There are a lot of teams in the league that would look at our center and that’s pretty good depth there. Identity on the fourth line and lower parts of the lineup, I thought they did a good job for most of the year and we feel comfortable going forward with our depth there. Transitional puck play is an area that we're going to continue to look at through personnel, whether that’s internally or outside. The backup goaltender situation was certainly a challenge the first part of the year. Give Anton [Khudobin] a lot of credit. Give Bruce a lot of credit for putting him in and trusting him as well. But, it put a lot of strain on us earlier in the year. So, those are areas I think we need to make sure we feel more comfortable with. On how difficult it was to coach without a training camp and how much he looks forward to setting up his own training camp… BC: Well, it’s hard to measure the degree of difficulty. You’re given an opportunity and it’s up to you to take advantage of it and be prepared. I’ve been a head coach before so, once you’re into that part of it, it becomes second nature. I was around since training camp, so I knew the players and some of their strengths and weaknesses, how we played, where I thought we could be better, where the players were looking for improvements after talking to them quickly in those first couple of days. So, we implemented a couple of things, and off we went. You hope that you make the right call in those areas. We talked about; right away, about being a team that would play – and the term “play fast” is getting thrown around a lot out there, but, we were going to upgrade our transition game; how we were going to move the puck quicker and attack. I guess that was our description of playing fast. I think it worked. It got our D involved, so you start scoring and obviously, that helped. People get excited about that – scoring goals and getting on offense, and I don’t think we lost a lot on the defensive side of things.