Bruce Cassidy's Stanley Cup win is only the start of painful month for Bruins

BOSTON -- Anyone within the Bruins organization who adamantly believed that Bruce Cassidy needed to go should be ashamed this morning. The man just proved beyond any doubt that he is a championship-caliber head coach, and his name will forever be etched into the most iconic trophy in all of sports.

To be fair, the idea that a coach winning a championship in one place means he could have or would have won a championship in another place is a somewhat specious endeavor. The elements at play are so incomparable, as are the conditions, as are the variables, that it's never quite that simple.

But -- but! -- the point is this: The Bruins decided a year ago that Cassidy needed to go. Whether that was the players who deemed his blunt coaching style to be too brusque, whether that was ownership that decided some change was needed no matter what it may be, or -- worst of all -- if it was a general manager who had to save his own job by making a drastic change to satisfy those bosses, the end result was a bad one. A very bad one.

The point is also this: Anyone within the Bruins organization who deemed Cassidy to be the problem may need to look in the mirror and reassess. 

The Bruins obviously had regular-season success to a historic degree, but that amounted to diddly in the playoffs. A first-round exit in which the replacement head coach made some puzzling decisions while the team blew a 3-1 lead hurts on its own. It hurts doubly to see the man who was fired almost exactly a year ago hoist the Stanley Cup for his new team in year one.

Alas, that's the reality for the Bruins. And the outlook for the near future calls for more pain sweeping into the Boston area.

In less than two weeks, the NHL will hold its annual awards ceremony at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. It figures to be a magnificent celebration of the sport of hockey, and it will also feature the Boston Bruins getting showered in awards.

Linus Ullmark figures to be a lock to win the Vezina Trophy as the league's best goaltender. (His save percentage went from .938 in the regular season to .896 in the playoffs.)

Patrice Bergeron will likely win his sixth Selke Trophy as the best defensive forward in the league. (He suffered an injury in the regular-season finale, missed the first four games of the playoffs, and finished an extremely uncharacteristic minus-6 in his three postseason games.)

Jim Montgomery will surely win the Jack Adams Award as the league's best coach. (Cassidy wasn't even a finalist for that one. He probably is OK with how that worked out.)

Connor McDavid's unreal season will prevent David Pastrnak from winning the Hart Trophy or Ted Lindsay Award, though the Bruins' star winger is a finalist for both.

That's all well and good, and it's technically a major positive for the organization if three postseason awards are given to members of the current roster and staff. 

But after winning an NHL-record 65 games and accumulating an NHL-record 135 points only to fall apart and disappear after one round of the postseason, getting those awards will certainly deliver yet another reminder of how badly the Bruins underperformed when the games actually mattered.