Kalman: After Week Off, Cassidy Magic Picks Up Where It Left Off For Bruins
By Matt Kalman, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- The brilliance of Bruce Cassidy seemingly knows no bounds.
First the Bruins interim coach casts a spell on the Bruins' closest competitors in the playoff race and makes sure those rivals do little damage in the standings during the Boston's week off.
Then Cassidy did something his predecessor didn't do all year, as the Bruins won their fourth game in a row by defeating the San Jose Sharks 2-1 in overtime on Sunday. They also won a road game against a California team for the first time in seven tries.
Shouldn't be long now before general manager Don Sweeney strips that interim tag off Cassidy's title considering all the things that have gone right since Feb. 7.
With their win against the Sharks, the Bruins retook third place in the Atlantic Division. Amazingly, they didn't fall out of that spot until Sunday when Toronto beat Carolina. While the Bruins were off for six days, the Maple Leafs went 1-2-0. Philadelphia went 0-2-0 and the New York Islanders went 1-2-0. Considering those three teams only played each other once (Toronto smoked New York 7-1) all three could've put some distance between themselves and the Bruins. Instead only the Florida Panthers, who were 3-0-0 during the Bruins' break, took advantage of the situation and even briefly passed Boston in the standings.
Under former coach Claude Julien the past couple years, the Bruins rarely took advantage of fortuitous situations. But the Cassidy era has been a fresh start in every way. And instead of dropping a game they were expected to lose to the Pacific Division leading Sharks, the Bruins first earned one point to get back into the second wild card in the Eastern Conference. Then a perfectly executed faceoff play in the defensive zone resulted in Brad Marchand's game-winning breakaway goal in the extra session, and as Marchand raised his arms in triumph the Bruins were lifted into third place in the division.
In another stroke of Cassidy magic, the Bruins became just the fourth team out of 20 (4-12-4) to win coming off their weeklong break. Juxtapose that with Julien's debut in Montreal, where the Canadiens came out of their week off and were listless in a 3-1 loss to Winnipeg. For all the talk of Julien reinvigorating the Canadiens and building up the confidence of his players, including struggling forward Alex Galchenyuk, only goaltender Carey Price looked like he got a boost from the coaching change. By the end of that game Galchenyuk was demoted from the first line to the third line and Montreal found out that Julien wasn't the second coming of Scotty Bowman -- and that may be because that second coming is Cassidy.
There's no denying that the Bruins are playing with a spring in their steps and they seem looser since the coaching change. Part of that may be because they don't have the uncertainty about the coaching situation hanging over their heads. And Cassidy, as an interim coach who's been empowered by Sweeney to both play a riskier game and allow for more player assessment, has little to lose. Cassidy could put Ryan Spooner, Jimmy Hayes and Frank Vatrano together as a line and if it didn't work out, well it wasn't supposed to anyway. Instead that line has given the Bruins the type of third line they've lacked all season, and contributed again with Spooner scoring the only Bruins goal of regulation.
Cassidy didn't feel pressure to play Tuukka Rask in both halves of the back-to-back before the break and was rewarded by a solid Anton Khudobin performance. And the coach hasn't felt the type of undying loyalty to Matt Beleskey that Julien had, and so the forward was a healthy scratch for the second time in three games, leaving the Bruins with the effective Tim Schaller-Dominic Moore-Riley Nash fourth line. Cassidy has also thrown Peter Cehlarik into the Bruins' top six and the positives have outweighed the negatives. New coach, new outlook, new calculations about risk vs. reward because everyone's being evaluated but the pressure is off.
One also can't ignore Cassidy's fresh voice and positivity. Despite what they're writing in Montreal, Julien might be less gruff with his players than former Canadiens coach Michel Therrien, but it's not like they went from Sam Kinison to Mr. Rogers. Julien could grate on players with the best of him, even in the Bruins' heyday. Just ask Spooner, ask Reilly Smith, ask even some of the core players from the 2011 Stanley Cup winners.
Cassidy can be tough as well, but so far he hasn't had the need to and based on expectations around the Bruins he probably won't come down as hard on guys for mistakes as Julien or most NHL coaches. The Bruins have obviously decided that careful hockey didn't pay off the past two seasons so it's time to take some risks. The coach has been empowered by management and the players have gotten the edict from Cassidy: just go out and play. You see it in so many players -- especially David Krejci, David Pastrnak, Torey Krug, Cehlarik, Spooner and Hayes.
It's a "what, me worry?" world for the Bruins right now, and don't look now but they're only four points behind Julien's Canadiens for first place.
Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.
