Six months before promoting Cassidy, the Bruins threw a $30 million bag at David Backes. That was a year after throwing a bag at Matt Beleskey, and trading (highly affordable) top-six right wing Reilly Smith with his value at its absolute lowest. And during Cassidy’s tenure, the Bruins dropped a combined $84 million on a free agent group that included John Moore, Brett Ritchie, Craig Smith, Mike Reilly, Derek Forbort, Tomas Nosek, Linus Ullmark, Erik Haula, and Nick Foligno.
The Bruins also willingly began almost every season with a bevy of holes on their roster, and relied on Cassidy to find magic formulas in house and with a shallow prospect pool. They willingly walked away from 40 minutes of top-four left-side defensive play in 2020 by letting Torey Krug and Zdeno Chara walk and landed on Forbort and Reilly as the answers after Matt Grzelcyk and Jeremy Lauzon struggled. They went half a season without a third-line center before bringing in Charlie Coyle in 2019. They routinely rotated expired deli meat and Blockbuster rewards card on David Krejci’s wings.
I mean, when Cassidy’s team was on the ropes in the 2019 Stanley Cup Final, Karson Kuhlman was deemed the best available bullet in his chamber. The 2019 Kuhlman Experiment was sandwiched around concussion-derailed and costly runs with Rick Nash and Ondrej Kase. The 2022 postseason saw Chris Wagner and Josh Brown utilized as momentum shifters, and the move back to Trent Frederic late in that first-round series felt a bit like playing violin with half the Titanic in the Atlantic.