The Stanley Cup returns to Massachusetts this summer.
Just don’t bother looking for it on Causeway Street.
Bruins fans chanted “We Want The Cup” throughout the team’s record-breaking-65-win-albeit-useless regular season.
They got what they wanted.
But brace for traffic.
Vegas Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy said he plans to spend his day with hockey’s sacred silver chalice while summering at his family’s house on Cape Cod.
We only use summer as a verb when it applies to those elites in the highest of social strata. Or for those visiting the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket or the Berkshires. Or for NHL coaches who won the Stanley Cup 372 days after being banned in Boston.
Cassidy won’t be bringing the Cup to Hutchinson Road in Winchester. Cassidy, his wife Julie, and their two kids lived there before he relocated to Nevada for work reasons last year. As a harbinger of their good fortune, the Cassidy Winchester homestead was sold for $2.75 million on Sept. 23, a nifty $750,000 more than it cost in 2017.
Cha-ching.
Cassidy’s Golden Knights neutered the Florida Panthers in five games to win the 2023 Stanley Cup Final. Cassidy lifted the Cup in front of his players, family and 19,058 of his newfound closest friends Wednesday night inside T-Mobile Arena just off the Las Vegas Strip after a 9-3 rout.
Tuukka Rask missed the extra point.
Vegas has a large strand of Boston in its DNA. Among those seeing their names affixed to the Cup alongside Cassidy: ex-Bruins players Phil Kessel and Reilly Smith. The one-time voice of the Bruins, Dave Goucher, and former Bruins PR honcho Eric Tosi are also in the employ of the Golden Knights.
Winners all.
For Kessel, it’s the third time he’s touched the Cup since being traded by Boston in 2009. His previous two rings were earned with the pre-John Henry Pittsburgh Penguins.
Then there’s Jack Eichel. If you want to see the Stanley Cup but can’t make it to the Cape, keep an eye on North Chelmsford. Its favorite son completed a tortuous NHL journey of his own in wondrous triumph Wednesday. Eichel was selected out of BU by the Buffalo Sabres with the No. 2 overall pick in 2015.
Eichel’s injury-plagued career with the Sabres was devoid of the postseason. He was dealt to Las Vegas in 2021. This was his first full season in Las Vegas and first career playoff run. He scored six goals with 20 assists and was a +14 in 22 games.
Arlington’s Pat Connaughton of the Milwaukee Bucks brought the Larry O’Brien trophy to Fidelity House two years ago. His basketball career began at the same facility where mine ended.
Why can’t we get players like that?
When the Golden Knights were conceived, legend has it that team owner Bill Foley said “playoffs in three. Cup in six.”
Jackpot!
The Golden Knights’ franchise launched for the 2017-18 season. It is the best 6-year-old on skates since little Wayne Gretzky was dazzling 10-year-olds up and down the Brantford, Ontario ice in 1967.
The Bruins? The debate rages whether firing Cassidy or trading Kessel was the team’s worst transaction of the 21st century.
History tells us that the juvenile squires and the elderly Bruins have each won one Stanley Cup since President Nixon’s re-election in 1972.
Now more than ever, the Bruins will cling desperately to the past. The team’s 100th season celebration will commence in earnest on Oct. 12.
Let us eat cake.
Moreso, the Bruins are fast becoming a relic on the ice. The biggest questions this offseason concern the possible return of 37-year-old Patrice Bergeron, 37-year-old David Krejci, and/or whether the team should blow it all up and deal 35-year-old Brad Marchand.
If Cassidy’s players in Boston did not outright demand his dismissal, they certainly placed the idea in the suggestion box outside Cam Neely’s office.
Six days later, the Vegas Golden Knights hired Cassidy to be their head coach.
Who said chivalry was dead?
Cassidy’s first and last best opportunity for a Stanley Cup in Boston came and went in 2019 with a Game 7 loss in TD Garden in the Stanley Cup Final. While “Gloria” echoed throughout St. Louis, Boston’s hockey denizens were left singing the blues.
Cassidy’s 2022 dismissal came after the Bruins were eliminated by the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round after a Game 7 loss.
This season, the Bruins blew a 3-1 series lead and got dumped by the No. 8 seed Panthers in the first round after a Game 7 loss.
Anyone else sensing a trend?
This time, they didn’t have Cassidy to kick around.
Jim Montgomery got overwhelmed by the moment and forgot to rotate his goaltenders against Florida.
The Great Collapse of 2023 fell even harder on the Bruins players after Cassidy rose like a phoenix in Las Vegas during the postseason. Cassidy brought his Tough Love and Defense First coaching style to a team that was not only receptive but wanting.
“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,” Golden Knights captain Matt Stone said via NHL.com after netting a hat trick in the clincher.
Loud-mouths in Las Vegas tend to end up being buried in the desert.
Not calling the shots on who should be the coach.
“It could be the best thing that ever happened to me in my career,” Cassidy added of leaving the Bruins, also via NHL.com.
If only Boston’s hockey fans had the same option.
Meanwhile, try to catch a glimpse of the Stanley Cup this summer.
It may be a while before you can see it again in the Bay State.
Bill Speros (@RealOBF and @BillSperos) can be reached at bsperos1@gmail.com