The Vegas Golden Knights shocked the world over the weekend when they fired Bruce Cassidy just weeks before the team was preparing to start their playoff journey. In his place, they hired John Tortorella.
It makes sense on paper. Tortorella was a free agent, working for ESPN (and making a terrible pick for his Stanley Cup winner). The Knights didn’t have to ask anyone but his agent if he was free to work for them. He’s a former Stanley Cup winner and has worked with hard personalities in the past. Cassidy becomes a top free agent coach, himself, and he might even take over a team before the season is over.
The hiring has many thinking of when this worked out perfectly for the 1999-2000 New Jersey Devils. That season, Lou Lamoriello chose to relieve Robbie Ftorek of his duties and elevate legendary defenseman and coach Larry Robinson into this role. The Devils, which might be the most talented team they’ve ever had, ran through the Eastern Conference before beating the reigning champion Dallas Stars in the Stanley Cup Final.
The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun brought up the comparison on Monday, pointing out that this is the ideal scenario for the Golden Knights. He actually spoke with Lou Lamoriello for the piece, who gave an interesting perspective.
“Yeah, you always think back,” Lamoriello told Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic on Monday morning. “You always know how very, very difficult it is to do something like that. If you recall, we were in first place. When you feel you have a team that has a chance to win, and where you’re at in the season, and if you don’t feel it’s going to go in the right direction, for whatever reasons you have — and you have to have reasons — you can’t just sit there.
The 2000 Devils had much different issues thant the 2026 Golden Knights
Of course, there are some connections here. The Devils were a playoff team, and the Knights are a playoff team. The Devils core already had a Stanley Cup victory, and the same goes for the Knights. There are a few major differences here.
The biggest difference, and why this is much less likely to work, is Lamoriello hired the assistance head coach to jump into the new role. Robinson had a foundational knowledge of the Devils. He knew the locker room and what made them tick. He didn’t have a learning curve because that happened in October.
He also understood what was really going on and causing them to play poorly. Maybe he had his finger on the pulse. Robinson was also very well liked, and the reason Ftorek was dismissed was because he had a tumultuous relationship with the players. If you remember, Lamoriello didn’t completely fire Ftorek. He gave him a job within the organization. He even put his name on the Stanley Cup.
The other difference is Ftorek wasn’t the head coach who won the Stanley Cup. He didn’t know what it was like to get in the trenches with these players and come out on the other side. Cassidy is the one who brought that Stanley Cup to Vegas.
This feels way closer to when Lamoriello himself took over the Devils from Claude Julien in 2007. That team built off that momentum to win their first-round matchup with the Tampa Bay Lightning, but they lost in five in the second round to the Ottawa Senators.
Tortorella doesn’t have time to have a full impact on the Knights. Will he try to implement a new system for the team to play in the final eight games? Will he try to learn Cassidy’s system to bring some sort of consistency? Will he come in and try to be a dominant force like he’s been in the past, or is he just trying to be a different voice?
The 2000 Devils didn’t have this many questions surrounding them, and that’s why they were able to turn their coaching change into a Stanley Cup.