One year and eight days after the Bruins fired him, Bruce Cassidy is a Stanley Cup champion

Talk about landing on your feet.

The Bruins fired Bruce Cassidy 373 days ago. A year ago today, the Vegas Golden Knights swooped in and anointed Cassidy their next head coach.

Tuesday night, 364 days after he took the helm in Vegas, Cassidy became a Stanley Cup champion, dispatching the Florida Panthers in five games with an emphatic 9-3 clinching win.

It's a dream come true for the Knights' liege, who upon helping lead the Bruins to the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, wanted no part of talk about legacies. He had one thing on his mind.

“I just want my name on the damn Cup, that’s what I want," Cassidy told reporters at the time before the B's eventually fell in Game 7 on home ice. 

He told BostonSportsJournal.com last summer, “The goal doesn't change for me. I want the name on the Stanley Cup. I would have loved to do it with Boston. But now it's Vegas. ... There's really no negatives other than we didn't win Game 7 in that Final that would have accomplished some of the goals that we all wanted. But we got to get back there and maybe have another chance here."

Tuesday, he got that other chance. Consider his wish granted.

“I’m in the club now," Cassidy said on the TNT broadcast. "I’m in the club and they can’t kick you out! That’s the way I’m feeling right now.”

While the clubs of the Las Vegas strip awaited the Knights for the wee hours of the morning, Cassidy was already enjoying the fruits of hockey's most elusive club, sipping from perhaps the greatest chalice there is. 

In the coming years, when a player raises the Cup above his head and stares at its glorious silver shimmer, he might lock eyes with 'Bruce Cassidy' etched among the 2022-23 Golden Knights. Years from now, once the ring of the Cup that Vegas will call home is removed and placed in the Hockey Hall of Fame, 'Bruce Cassidy' will be looking out from the glass case at all passersby. 

"I told you guys a long time ago, in '19, I just want my name on the damn Cup," Cassidy told reporters. "It's going on the damn Cup. It's that simple."

It was all part of the plan when he accepted the gig in Vegas.

“Do you have a chance to win the Cup? Because that's what you're in it for and balance that versus maybe a team that was on the rise,” Cassidy told BSJ of what made Vegas such an appealing destination for him after his firing from Boston. “Us coaches want that chance to win. I think that tilted the scales. Not that the other teams don't. But that's just how I felt about Vegas. … You got a blend of everything. And that was it. A chance to win at the end.”

The Golden Knights were front and center after Boston let Cassidy go. They wanted a slice of what got him and the Bruins to six straight playoff appearances, a Jack Adams Award, a President's Trophy, a Stanley Cup Final and a 245-108-46 regular season record. 

"What they thought their team needed, what I brought to the table and with Boston — strong special teams, accountability with players, played good team defense. A lot of things they felt would translate into what they were looking for," Cassidy said in August.

It all panned out. 

While the penalty kill suffered at the hands of the juggernaut Edmonton Oilers' offense, it was flat-out dominant against the Panthers in the final, going 14-for-14 in the five games. The Cats entered the series working at 27.9 percent on the power play but dipped to 21.1. The Golden Knights' power play finished right around average at 21.9 percent, but Vegas was again dominant in the final, working at 31.6 percent (6-for-19). 

Vegas' structure was vaunted in front of Adin Hill, who helped the cause by also playing the best hockey of his life in goal after Laurent Brossoit did the same before his injury. Vegas finished with the fourth-lowest goals-against per game (2.59) in the playoffs. Their 2.4 in the final would have led the postseason. 

Mission accomplished for Cassidy.

“He came in, brought an intensity to our locker room that maybe we needed,” Vegas captain Mark Stone said on the broadcast. “He wanted to win as badly as anybody else in that locker room.”

He later added to reporters, "I think he cares so much about winning and that's why I think he jelled with our group because our team cares so much. We wanted to win the Stanley Cup. He wanted to win the Stanley Cup. He pushed us hard this season. He pushed a lot of buttons to help us get here. But I think like you saw, the tears in his eyes, he just wanted to win like the rest of us. I think that's why he chose to come here."

It's easy to point and laugh at the Bruins, who after firing Cassidy, went on to put up the greatest regular season in NHL history with Jim Montgomery only to fizzle out to the Panthers. 

At the same time, a few things can be true.

First, the Bruins still needed a new voice. Since 2019, Boston had underperformed under Cassidy, even if the blame wasn't squarely on him. It was time for a new message. It happens. Coaches have a shelf life, and Cassidy certainly knows that. 

“I thought I did my job. Nobody's happy when you don't win the Cup. I'm not gonna sit here and say the staff was infallible or anything like that. We needed to be better in the playoffs in certain years," Cassidy reflected last summer. "But I also know this right?  Longevity in the coaching business is a luxury, and you have to typically win a lot of championships, like Bill [Belichick], to stay in one place for a long time. Typically, that's the way it is. 

"The date you're hired, you're on the clock. I understand that. So I didn't look at it necessarily in those terms. I just looked at it — did I give the Bruins my best? And I felt I did. A new voice, that happens a lot. That's a decision they made and I landed in a great spot. I look at the positive side of it.”

As Stone said, Cassidy was exactly what Vegas needed. The fit was perfect on both sides.

There was no pointing and laughing when the Bruins rattled off 65 wins and rewrote the record books. Montgomery's messaging and system worked ahead of the postseason tailspin. 

Vegas' run showcased Cassidy's growth behind the bench after his learning experience in 2019 on top of other playoff shortcomings. As has been written here before, Montgomery, coming off his second postseason as a head coach, and the Bruins must heed the lessons of their 2023 collapse. 

Cassidy, who will celebrate with the Cup in Cape Cod where he still plans to spend his summer, is not concerned with the past. 

"It's about us," he said Tuesday. "It didn't matter what Boston did. We're Stanley Cup champions."