Congratulations to the Vegas Golden Knights on their first Stanley Cup Championship. A special congrats to VGK head coach, Bruce Cassidy
Cassidy was unceremoniously fired last summer, when several of the core Bruins stars voiced their displeasure. Bruce quickly landed in Vegas with a "Golden" opportunity to take a team that had come close, and push them over the top.
A few take aways from Vegas' run that the rest of the NHL teams will be looking to copy. The first would be the huge mobile defense that Vegas assembled to keep their opponents on the perimeter for the most part. Second their ability to block shots which was second to no other team throughout the regular season and the playoffs. Third and maybe the most important aspect was their ability to remain focused on the task at hand and leave the retaliation and bad penalties to their opponents.
Those last couple of details are one's that do not take skill to achieve, but they are also not easy to accomplish as they are entire team buy-in concepts. Emotions often take teams out of their structure, but Cassidy and his team never wavered.
We all know the Wild have their roster/cap issues, however they are a quality playoff team that has some top end scroring talent. They however lack the details needed to be successful when it matters most.
The assistant coaches in Minnesota should have been an area that Bill Guerin looked at far more closely, as an immediate area in which to upgrade. Instead he decided for his first coaching hire, he would promote one of those assistant coaches, Brett McLean, to head coach in Iowa.
This is a huge off-season for the Wild and making the most of every opportunity is going to be key with the cash strapped franchise.
Minnesota Wild Blogger • 
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