I am not defending Bruce Cassidy or our hiring of him but this post is not technically correct. Bruce led the Caps into the playoffs his first year of coaching for us where we lost in the playoffs to the Tampa Bay Lightning. If memory serves me correctly, we had more than 90 points that season making his debut season the second most successful for a Caps coach in our history with Ron Wilson’s first season the most successful. It was in Bruce’s second season that the team imploded and did not perform well.
I hope Butch doesn’t owe an AOL bill. Ted you are a great accountant, but Butch’s problem was Jagr who undermined him and was so used to the Pittsburgh way.
Cassidy did a good job his first year in DC, and took a team that was a bit moribund and breathed some life into it by yelling at them (they needed it). The problem is that yelling can only work so much before a team gets used to it. Coaches like that in sports tend to be successful where they are, but also tend to move around a lot (Mike Keenan, Billy Martin, etc.) because after a time, the yelling becomes background noise.
The problem with Cassidy is that in order to get the attenion of the players he had to say things that would get their attention. And when you tell players to put the team ahead of family, well, most players are not going to be too happy about that.
The other problem with Cassidy was the “Grand Rapids Express”. The Caps had (and have) an excellent farm system. When players are needed they move up in the ranks to get a shot at the NHL. Cassidy, when he got the job, brought over no less that 5 players who had played for him in Grand Rapids in the IHL: Doig, Kwiatkowski, Ciernick, Kip Miller, and Wilsie. Wilsie turned out to be on ok player, but there was a reason Doig, Ciernick, and Kiwi were playing in Grand Rapids… they were minor league players. They had no business in the NHL and certainly the Caps could have brought up someone from the farm system in their place. (Yes, I know Doig was a good guy off the ice, and his charity work is wonderful, but he really had no business being on an NHL team….)
Thanks for the correction, Ted. It’s always an honor to hear from you.
In fairness, there have only been a handful of coaching changes since the Caps first started making the playoffs and Cassidy’s first year featured the team with twice the talent and twice the Stanley Cup Finals experience entrusted to any other first year Caps coach ever.
That’s why the second best season among that group was a drastic underachievement. Still, if all of my old bosses could speak as kindly of my past, I’d be a lucky man. I might even apply to coach the Thrashers. The world needs more nice people at the top.