His job is simple, win hockey games. As much as I hate to say it because I wish he'd give the young guys more leash, his job is to win games. Cassidy takes what he's given and rolls out what he feels gives them the best chance to win. So when 3 guys are responsible for 40% of my goals, ya I'm probably not breaking them up. I'm going to lean more on the guys who've been there and proven themselves because my goal as the coach is to put the team in the best possible position to win.
But isn't making sure your young players are playing to the level they have done in the past part of winning hockey games?
Isn't part of being an NHL coach is slowly and incrementally getting the team better and better throughout the year? If I'm an NHL coach and my team plays really well in the early part and really poorly in the 2nd half doesn't that fall on me as a coach? Ideally each game my team should be more prepared, more accustomed to the system, more comfortable in their roles. Not just young players, all their players. And if I'm coaching younger guys, my expectation is your better in Game 82 in April than you were in Game 1 in October. If the player isn't not, am I doing my job as coach? I mean who is at fault? We can't blame the AHL coach for a full-time NHLer regressing between Game 1 and Game 82.
When he's on the bench coaching a game, yeah his job is to win that game. By whatever reasonable means necessary. And to be honest benching guys hasn't been something I've noticed Cassidy using a lot. He's done it a bit, but nothing excessive IMO.
Outside of the actual games, he becomes a manager and leader of a group of young men. And that encompasses the entire package IMO, including getting the best out of the young players you've been given to coach. No one is saying Cassidy needs to be focused on skills development or any special one-on-one training or anything like that. But it's all about putting the guys you have in the best positions to succeed, and that may include working on player development even at the NHL level. Working on it may just be instructing your assistant coaches to work with a player on something. But he can't bury his head in the sand and ignore it either.
