Vegas Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy is looking forward to training camp experiments and believes the roster is still as good as last year.
Cassidy isn’t fond of long offseasons but understands that it’s probably a good thing for many of his players who are recovering from injuries or offseason surgeries. It’s Cassidy’s third training camp with the Golden Knights and he’s looking to make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the ninth consecutive season.
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Entering training camp, Cassidy will need to be experimental and find the best lineup for the first game of the regular season. Last year, Cassidy could never find the correct lineup and was part of the reason why the Golden Knights lost to the Dallas Stars in game seven of the first round. Before conjuring a lineup, Cassidy wants to revisit the fundamentals and said so in an interview with Gary Lawless of NHL.com.
“The theme will be revisiting fundamentals, and it won’t be a lot different than the last two camps,” said Cassidy. “Part of the reason for that is we’ve had good starts. So that will be the theme. There will be a few underlying objectives to find out where the new wingers fit. So that’s the part of camp that, as coaches, we’d have to do some evaluating, whereas last year, we kind of went with the lines that got us the Cup, so it was a little bit easier.”
The Golden Knights lost a lot of key players and Stanley Cup winners. Alec Martinez and Chandler Stephenson were Stanley Cup champions on multiple occasions and Jonathan Marchessault is the all-time leader in goals, assists and points. Cassidy understands the respect they deserve but he believes they have the assets to replace them.
“On the blue line, it’s simple Noah Hanifin in, Alec Martinez out. Marty’s a Stanley Cup-decorated guy that we had towards the end of his career, and Hanny is still in the middle of his. So I’m not being disrespectful in that regard, and I don’t think the other five guys have aged so much that they’re still really good hockey players, and a few of them are in their prime getting better too,” said Cassidy. “So up front, down the middle, well, you’re putting Tomas Hertl in for Chandler Stephenson. So that’s your argument. Stevie’s won the Cup twice too, so I wouldn’t be disrespectful of that. Tomas Hertl is a great NHL player. Are we better? We’ll see this year. I guess certainly we could be. Jack is a young guy, Karly, I still think, is a young guy, and Nic Roy certainly is too. We’re pretty good down the middle.”
The offseason turnover comes with line changes and Cassidy has been spending his summer thinking about different combos and ways the Golden Knights could lineup.
“I have it in my head, and we’re gonna try and see if they work. But typically what happens is chemistry develops, sometimes organically, and we’ll try not to close that off,” said Cassidy. “You come into camp and see who fits where. We’re set down the middle, so who compliments who? We’re going to move a lot of pieces around. We may even put Nic Roy at the wing and see, does that give us more offense and what do we lose if he goes from the center to the wing. Can we replace him and still have a valuable fourth line? So those are the things you probably discuss more than anything. Little bit of the D pairs, but we know what we have back there. We like our goaltending. So the biggest challenge for us will be fitting those new pieces in on the wing. Who has the best chemistry with Jack? Karly, Tomas, Nic?”
Early signs point to Victor Olofsson getting an extended run beside Eichel but as Cassidy stated, things are subject to change.
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