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Q&A with Bruins Coach Bruce Cassidy on the season, the Caps, the top line, and Kovalchuk
The Athletic: Obviously, you would rather play deep into June, but how important was this time from the end of the season until now to prepare for next season?
Cassidy: The biggest thing we did is sat down with pro scouting staff, management and coaching staff and talked about basically what we liked and room for improvement. Once we addressed those things, it’s, ‘OK, how are we going to get there?’ Do we have to go outside the organization? What’s coming? What’s ready?
Last year we went through this exercise and we decided we had some good, young people and gave them the opportunity. This year, it’s the same conversation. Are they ready? Again, those are always good conversations because you don’t know but you project.
Down the middle of the ice, we talked about Riley Nash, who’s a free agent, and what happens if he doesn’t return. Is one of the kids ready? (Jakob) Forsbacka Karlsson, (Trent) Frederic, (Jack) Studnicka, so those are the interesting conversations. We spent a lot of time on that. Stuff gets tossed around the room about what people hear outside the organization, so that’s always good for a staff. For example: the team really played fast and that’s what we hear from others, so we want that. The negatives, obviously, is what happened in the playoffs and we didn’t get it done. You go through those things and that was the biggest thing for me.
You watch the playoffs. You watch Washington and its (defense) core – (Michal) Kempny, (Christian) Djoos – these guys that are playing are not huge and fast, or big and mean, but they’re puck movers and they got it done. (The Capitals) defended the neutral zone and we needed to do a better job of that in the playoffs. Ottawa did it last year, Nashville too and now Washington, so you’ve got to take certain parts of it.
Then, don’t (discredit) your entire season. We were still a pretty good team during the year and we don’t want to get too far away from what we did well.
Q&A with Bruins Coach Bruce Cassidy on the season, the Caps, the top line, and Kovalchuk
The Athletic: Obviously, you would rather play deep into June, but how important was this time from the end of the season until now to prepare for next season?
Cassidy: The biggest thing we did is sat down with pro scouting staff, management and coaching staff and talked about basically what we liked and room for improvement. Once we addressed those things, it’s, ‘OK, how are we going to get there?’ Do we have to go outside the organization? What’s coming? What’s ready?
Last year we went through this exercise and we decided we had some good, young people and gave them the opportunity. This year, it’s the same conversation. Are they ready? Again, those are always good conversations because you don’t know but you project.
Down the middle of the ice, we talked about Riley Nash, who’s a free agent, and what happens if he doesn’t return. Is one of the kids ready? (Jakob) Forsbacka Karlsson, (Trent) Frederic, (Jack) Studnicka, so those are the interesting conversations. We spent a lot of time on that. Stuff gets tossed around the room about what people hear outside the organization, so that’s always good for a staff. For example: the team really played fast and that’s what we hear from others, so we want that. The negatives, obviously, is what happened in the playoffs and we didn’t get it done. You go through those things and that was the biggest thing for me.
You watch the playoffs. You watch Washington and its (defense) core – (Michal) Kempny, (Christian) Djoos – these guys that are playing are not huge and fast, or big and mean, but they’re puck movers and they got it done. (The Capitals) defended the neutral zone and we needed to do a better job of that in the playoffs. Ottawa did it last year, Nashville too and now Washington, so you’ve got to take certain parts of it.
Then, don’t (discredit) your entire season. We were still a pretty good team during the year and we don’t want to get too far away from what we did well.