Cassidy on his first full season, workloads for Rask & Chara, and the talk his young D 'sucks'

Bruce Cassidy is set to begin his first full season as head coach of the Bruins and he’s ready to start his legacy in Boston.

He served as the team’s interim coach for the final 33 regular-season games and during the postseason after the Bruins fired Claude Julien on Feb. 7. Under Cassidy, the Bruins went 18-8-1 and earned a playoff berth, before losing to the Ottawa Senators in the first round.

It was evident that Cassidy, 52, would eventually take over behind Boston’s bench after the organization fired former general manager Peter Chiarelli and replaced him with Don Sweeney in 2015.

Soon after, Chiarelli became president and general manager of the Edmonton Oilers and wanted to hire Cassidy, but the Bruins wouldn’t allow it. So, it was only a matter of time before Cassidy replaced Julien.

As the Bruins prepare for the 2017-18 season, Cassidy sat down with BostonSportsJournal.com for an exclusive, in-depth interview.

McDonald: Heard you played with Colin Montgomerie during the CVS Charity Classic in Barrington, R.I. Who else did you play with this summer?

Cassidy: Cam Neely. He’s a Hall of Famer.

McDonald: Did you let him win?

Cassidy: No. I actually won that day.

McDonald: Recently, you attended Patriots training camp day. I know you didn’t get a chance to speak with Bill Belichick, but what was it like for you to be around that atmosphere?

Cassidy: I loved it. I love the NFL and there’s no better program than the Patriots. I enjoyed it. Watching the pace and tempo of practice and how they go from one drill to the next, it was very organized. It was my first one, so I don’t know if they’re all like that. I really enjoyed it. There were a lot of competition drills, a lot of good stuff.

McDonald: Ok, let's get into the hockey. Now that you’ve had time to digest everything that happened last season, from a personal standpoint how would you describe it?

Cassidy: The (interim head coach title) never bothered me. I figured if you do your job, and I had a relationship with Donnie and I’m comfortable with him, so I figured if I did the job that we sat down and talked about, that I would get my opportunity, and I did and here we are.

The work part of it, I was ready to go. I had a lot of experience in the organization, and I’ve been through it before in Washington. Once the opportunity came, I had a pretty good idea how I was going to approach it, whether it was this year or another organization in three years. I knew how I was going to approach my next chance.

Really, there wasn’t a lot of anxiety. Kevin (Dean) asked me that question about the difference (between the AHL and NHL) and it was an interesting question because we had two days before (the Bruins) played (after I was promoted to head coach), so we didn’t have a lot of time to mess around and sometimes that’s not bad. You have your plan in place for practice, and what you’re going to say to your leaders and off you go.

Now, we’ve had three months to overthink it and there are advantages to both. For the most part, I just wanted to get after it. The guys knew there was urgency and we wanted to make the playoffs, which we did. We had to play a certain way and that was what our focus was on and let’s get back to playing a little more assertive, aggressive, live with our mistakes and learn from them and move on. I thought we did right away, so the message got across to the guys and you could tell they wanted to get back to the dance.

McDonald: Now that you’ve had this offseason to think about it more, how does that approach change going into this season?

Cassidy: The style of play we want to play, we’ll pick up right where we left off last year, for the most part. Regular-season hockey and playoff hockey there’s definitely a difference in the games. It’s harder to score. You’re playing against better teams, better-structured teams and teams are laying it on the line, but we still want to play a certain style. We want to be known as a team that’s hard to play against, a team that’s going to be assertive and come at you aggressive.

We don’t want to lose the Bruins culture and what has made them the blue-collared, hard, solid defensively, but we want to bring the offensive part of the game, which we did and we want to keep building on that. It depends on personnel a lot of times, which leads us into the next part and that’s the exciting thing is to see what we got with some of these young guys.

That’s what we’re going to try to emphasize in training camp, and the conditioning part as well. We’re going to keep our practice level up and being able to skate all day is what the good teams are able to do.

McDonald: In what way have the players accepted that philosophy?

Cassidy: I think they relish it, to be honest with you. I think they like to skate and a lot of guys want to play that way. It’s generally more enjoyable if you’re practicing at a high level and then try to translate that into a game, so actually, the game should slow down for you if you practice at a certain level.

That’s the mentality, and if you ask the guys to a man, they enjoy the way we played (after the coaching change) and that’s just one person’s philosophy. It’s what has made this franchise successful and we’re just trying to blend the Bruins’ way with the way the game is going.

McDonald: You mentioned Kevin Dean, who was promoted from Providence and is one of your assistants, so how is he going to help in his new role?

Cassidy: We’ve worked together and he subscribes to our style of play and how I like to play. He understands our bench communication very well and we had it for five years in Providence. Obviously, this is a different level but he knows me and knows what the expectations are. I like the way he teaches. We compliment one another. Everyone sees the game in their own style but our styles mesh. The things that I may sometimes overlook, he’ll supplement that with the stuff he looks at, in terms of the defending part, boxing out and position-wise, using your body. Whereas I’m thinking the big picture the whole game, he’ll get down to the nuts and bolts with an individual. He’s good at that and has a great personality with the guys, and he’ll be good in the room. He’s easy to talk to and that’s what he’ll bring. He’ll just have to get up to speed with NHL opponents and how the game is different. It’s hockey but players are better and matchups become a little more scrutinized and those are the things he’ll have to figure out, just like I did.

McDonald: So, with Kevin in Boston, former P-Bruins captain and assistant coach Jay Leach takes over behind the bench. How do you think he’ll handle his first head coaching position?

Cassidy: It’s good for him. He’s a young guy that’s really dedicated. I don’t know him that well, so I can’t talk to his coaching strengths and weaknesses, but I know he’s dialed in. He was here during rookie development camp and is very organized and it’s something he wants to do. Players want to see a guy who’s invested, so I think he’ll do well. He’ll have his ups and downs like any first-year coach. He should be good.

McDonald: Staying with the coaching aspect, the organization added another goalie coach in Mike Dunham, who recently spent nine seasons with the New York Islanders in the same role. He’ll join long-time Bruins goalie coach Bob Essensa, so how will having two goalie coaches help?

Cassidy: (Dunham) will spend a lot more time in Providence with the younger guys, and Bob will spend a lot more time here with Tuukka (Rask), and let’s assume it’s (Anton Khudobin). And (Malcolm Subban) and (Zane McIntyre) are right there and if they play to what we’re expecting, then they should push Khudobin. How it all plays out is anybody’s guess. Right now Dobby has a leg up just because of his resume. Those other guys haven’t proven it at this level. They’ve had pockets of success in the American League and they’ve gotten better. Are they good enough to be our backup? Only time will tell.

McDonald: Since you mentioned the goaltending situation, how did it help Khudobin that he was able to finish strong last season?

Cassidy: Just from a personal standpoint, as an athlete when things go well and to get a little bit of credit and not get beaten down when it goes the other way, it's only human nature and you have to have a certain level of resiliency. It helped him confidence-wise and confidence can be a strong word and that’s something that comes from within. You’re paid to do a job and it helps when people around you have confidence in the goaltending position. It did him a world of good to finish that way. Until we see the product on the ice in October and November, we’ll find out and hopefully it wasn’t all forgotten and he says ‘Hey, I don’t want to go through what I did at the start of the previous season, so I’m going to do what I have to do.’ That’s coming in physically ready to play and being ready mentally to handle the backup duties and whatever games are thrown at him, because it’s been well documented that we have to watch Tuukka’s work load. We say it every year, and this is my first full year, so I’m going to say it too and I hope I can stick to that. But some of that is entirely on whether or not Dobby can do the job.

Sometimes wins and losses are tough. You have to watch which starts does he get or — if it’s on back-to-backs when we’re traveling back home — is he getting some of the best teams? There’s a lot that goes into it. You have to make sure you just don’t stick him with the crappy starts and then expect him to carry the team. Most backups aren’t able to do that and that’s why they’re backups.

McDonald: So, does that mean 25 starts for Khudobin is the goal?

Cassidy: I don’t want to put a number on it, but we know once Tuukka gets into the 60s it’s not good for him. Let me rephrase that. It’s not that it’s not good, I just think the numbers start going against him. Ideally, we’d like to keep Tuukka between 55-60 (games). I’m not trying to be disrespectful if he plays 61 (or more) and maybe he’ll come in and want more than that. But ideally that’s what we want to do as an organization. Is that 24 starts for Dobby? It could be. It could be anywhere between 22 and 27.

McDonald: How do you see the defense core shaping up as far as minutes?

Cassidy: Well, where’s (Brandon) Carlo in his second year? (Charlie) McAvoy had a very short but impressive run, so some of those questions minute-wise will affect the other guys. If there’s an internal competition, how motivated is Kevan Miller? He had a strong playoffs, a strong finish. He’s getting into that area where he’s at the age of his career where some of his best hockey is right in front of him. He started a little bit late, in terms of his first games in the NHL, he didn’t start like Carlo at age 20, so Miller’s at that mark.

Adam McQuaid was healthy for the most part until the very end of the season. [Paul] Postma comes in with something to prove. We’ve got a lot of right shots on paper, but some of those guys have the ability to play the left side, so we’re not going to force a lefty in there.

Torey Krug, it’s well documented he wants to grow his game. He doesn’t want to be just known has an offensive-minded defenseman, even though he’s been very good at what he does. He wants to grow his game and wants more responsibility.

I said this last year at the start of the year, but I thought our D took a little bit of a bad rap, in terms of people expecting the worst. They were solid and they did their job. As the season went on, everyone’s critique wasn’t ‘Oh, the D sucks.’ They did a good job and we want to continue to build on that and have them be our backbone.

McDonald: Many thought Zdeno Chara, at this point of his career, would become a third-pairing guy. He even hinted at that a few seasons ago. What type of conversation will you have with him?

Cassidy: Well, I will have a longer conversation with him, but we had our meeting at the end of last season and I’m surprised he ever said that because that doesn’t sound like him – at all. He wants as much responsibility as you’re willing to give him. He trains for it. He takes pride in that part of it and he’s been very vocal about that. He works his ass off all summer and all winter so he can play all those minutes in all situations.

We’ll do what’s best for the team and if Zee’s capable of keeping his minutes up there then he’ll get them, if that’s best for the team. If some of these other guys push him and can play and can eat up a few of his minutes in certain situations then we’ll do that, because that’s probably better in the long run. I say probably because I see some guys play a lot of minutes all season and they’re able to sustain it and if anybody can do it, it’s Zee. I’m not going to be one of those guys who says, ‘Well, he’s not going to be any good if he plays more than 20 minutes.’ I’ll never be the guy saying that. But, if is play on the ice deteriorates because of that. to the point where I believe it. then we will have a conversation. He was one of our steadiest, best defensemen again last year. He contributed 10 goals, only one on the power play. He was a big reason why we were the top team on the penalty kill and he played his shutdown minutes. We were one of the best puck-possession teams in terms of defending, and he deserves his fair share of credit for that. He also brought a young kid along in Carlo and taught him the value of shutting down the other teams’ top lines. There are so many positives there and he’ll get the minutes that he’ll get and we’ll see where those end up.

McDonald: How do you see David Pastrnak continuing his development as an offensive threat?

Cassidy: I assume he’ll continue to get better. I don’t know why he wouldn’t. He loves the game. He’s invested. You can see he’s growing into a man. I had him as an 18-year-old in Providence, and I walked in the door last year at training camp when I was hired as an assistant and I didn’t recognize him at first. He’s maturing physically and that will make him that much stronger on the puck, because he has it a lot and he likes to play one-on-one hockey. So if you’re going to do that you have to be strong on it, otherwise there will be a lot of turnovers. Hopefully that part of his game will continue to get better and I assume it will. He’s at that age he’ll fill out physically and it’s just a matter ... like a lot of guys his age that are offensive-minded, he’ll continue to grow his game into a 200-foot player and be a valuable player for the team. On nights when the puck’s not going in, I’ll be able to use him in all situations. But, he’s got to want that part of it and that’s what we’ll keep talking about.

McDonald: Health-wise, will everyone be ready for camp?

Cassidy: As far as I know, yes. Everyone’s on schedule from what I’ve been told, so there won’t be any surprises there on my end.

McDonald: Enter your first full season as head coach, what’s your goal as far as longevity?

Cassidy: Let’s not go there. Twenty years would be nice (laughs). Sometimes I just want to be sitting here next week in this line of work.

McDonald: What would you like your legacy to be in Boston?

Cassidy: I want to be a Stanley Cup champion. And, once you get one you want to do it again. On top of that, I want fans to look back and say, ‘I enjoyed going to games. They were a team that represented the city and the culture. They played hard. They were exciting to watch. They were resilient. They were a team.’ Those are the things I hope for down the road whenever that may be.