Logan Thompson bit the hand that once fed him this weekend, beating his former Vegas Golden Knights in a shootout on Saturday to end the Capitals’ western road trip.
The loss proved to be the last straw for Vegas head coach Bruce Cassidy. On Sunday, the team fired Cassidy — who had been the longest-tenured head coach in franchise history — after four seasons, bringing in John Tortorella for the remainder of the 2025-26 schedule.
Thompson’s performance on Saturday may have sealed Cassidy’s fate, but he’s had plenty of experience playing under him. Cassidy coached Thompson for two seasons in Vegas, where they won the Stanley Cup together in 2022-23, and reunited on Team Canada at the 2026 Olympics.
Though Thompson’s time in Vegas ended on a somewhat sour note, he didn’t take pleasure in Cassidy’s firing.
“You never want to see someone lose their job, especially Bruce,” Thompson told RMNB. “He has an amazing family and kids. It was definitely good to catch up with him and talk with him in Milan at the Olympics. I think what he did for that city, what he did for me individually, like I said, I wouldn’t be a Stanley Cup champion without Bruce. Same can be said with Vegas. They wouldn’t be Stanley Cup champions without Bruce Cassidy.”
With 12 seasons under his belt as an NHL head coach, Thompson was confident Cassidy would be back with another team.
“I know he’ll land on his feet,” he said. “He can be out of the game as long as he wants, but I know he’s going to get another coaching job and, I think he’s going to be very successful wherever he lands.”
Thompson offered positive memories of his time with Cassidy, but Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman noted Cassidy’s relationship with the locker room had faltered well before the coaching change.
“Three, four years. And then he really starts to grind on players,” Friedman said.
Friedman cited a meeting during Vegas’ second-round series against the Edmonton Oilers last spring as a turning point.
“Before Game Five (against the Oilers), there was a really tense meeting between Cassidy and some of those players,” he said. “And I think at the end of last year, it kind of frayed their relationship. And I know some players said some things to management, management backed Cassidy. But it seems to be pretty obvious this year, and obviously Vegas management realized it too, that his message just wasn’t getting through anymore.”
While Thompson offered only positives when talking publicly about his former coach, his own relationship with Golden Knights brass hasn’t been smooth sailing. Thompson requested a trade when he couldn’t get a starting role in Vegas, the team instead relying on Adin Hill as its number one goaltender.
Thompson’s reportedly frosty relationship with Cassidy and Pete DeBoer (another former Golden Knights head coach during Thompson’s tenure), both assistant coaches for Team Canada, may also have been responsible for the choice not to include Thompson on Canada’s 4 Nations Face-Off in 2025.
And since arriving in Washington, Thompson has played some of his best hockey with a chip on his shoulder, especially against Vegas. He now has a record of 4-0-0 against his old team.
“It’s always good to beat a team that — I guess an easy way to say it is a team that didn’t want you,” Thompson said Monday. “So it’s always fun to beat them.”
Not only did Thompson help put the final nail in Cassidy’s coffin, but his performance on Saturday only highlighted Vegas’ weakness in net since Thompson came to Washington in 2024. Adin Hill has just a .866 save percentage this season and ranks third-last in the NHL in goals saved above expected (-13.8), per MoneyPuck, while Thompson’s 29.1 goals saved above expected sits in second place.
Still, when asked about his former squad, Thompson opted to take the high road.
“I have a lot of respect for all those guys in the room,” he said. “Bruce Cassidy and that whole organization, I wouldn’t be a Stanley Cup champion without them. So at the same time, there’s still a lot of respect. And a lot of those guys were my teammates a couple months ago at the Olympics as well.”
