Vegas Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy has issued an apology to the Arizona Coyotes after taking shots at the team on Saturday. When the Golden Knights gave up a 4-2 loss in Game Five against the Dallas Stars, Cassidy didn’t mince words on his team’s performance.
“We had 24 giveaways. I’m not sure you’re beating the Arizona Coyotes in January with 24 giveaways,” Cassidy said postgame. “No disrespect to Arizona, but it’s not the right way to play.”
The jab at Arizona was a surprising one and not just because it’s unusual to be talking about the Coyotes this late in an NHL season. Cassidy told reporters on Wednesday that he has apologized to the team for the “disrespectful” out of left field body shot.
“It was disrespectful,” he said, per NHL.com’s Nick Cotsonika. “It was a dumb thing to say about puck management, to bring another team in.”
Disrespectful or otherwise, Cassidy’s judgement of the Coyotes wasn’t entirely inaccurate. The Coyotes placed second-last in the Central with a record of 28-40-14, ahead of only the actively-tanking Blackhawks.
January marked an especially low point. The Coyotes won only three of their 15 games that month for a .233 points percentage. One of those wins came against Cassidy’s own Golden Knights, who the Yotes trounced 4-1. None of the other wins that month came against playoff teams. Vegas managed to lose that game with only two giveaways, but the loss might have stuck with Cassidy anyways.
The Coyotes’ troubles haven’t stopped on the ice. After the Yotes spent a year playing in the 5,000 seat Mullett Arena, voters shot down a plan to build a new arena in Tempe, Arizona. The team will stay in Mullett for at least one more season, but the long-term future of the franchise remains in limbo.
The Golden Knights, meanwhile, seem to have taken Cassidy’s message to heart. They utterly dominated the Stars in Game Six, beating them in a 6-0 barnburner to win the series. With a few days off, Vegas will now prepare to take on the Florida Panthers in Game One the Stanley Cup Final on Saturday.
After missing the playoffs in 2022, the Golden Knights have excelled in Cassidy’s first year with the team. He joined the team in June after he was abruptly fired by the Boston Bruins, where he had coached for the prior six seasons. Now, his Golden Knights have advanced to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since their inaugural 2018 season.
Screenshot: Vegas Golden Knights/NHL.com
