The moment the Boston Bruins said they were firing head coach Bruce Cassidy, most of the hockey world seemed to agree that he would not be off an NHL bench for very long. Considering the end of his Bruins tenure came a week ago, this might be a bit faster than anyone anticipated. Regardless, the Vegas Golden Knights made it Twitter-official on Tuesday night:

The news was originally broken by reporter Kevin Weekes. My analysis of the Bruins letting Cassidy go can be found here.

Cassidy's biggest impact for Vegas will likely come on the defensive end. Over the last five seasons, Boston had the fewest goals against at 5-on-5 in the league, as well as the lowest goals against overall (per Evolving Hockey). While we can chalk up some of the elite play to having elite players like Patrice Bergeron and Brad Marchand, the reality is that Boston had the exact same goals against rate at 5-on-5 with those two on the ice as they did without them on the ice (per Natural Stat Trick). Boston was largely able to lock things down defensively regardless of the five-player unit being used and Vegas needs some improvement here: they were 16^th by goals against at 5-on-5 in 2021-22 and 13^th by expected goals against. We can chalk some of that up to injury, but they weren't an elite defensive team the year prior, either. They do have top-end offensive talent but if they're going to push themselves back into contender status, they need to work on the defensive side of the game, and Cassidy should be able to help in this respect.

To that end, from a fantasy perspective, this is great news for the goaltending tandem of Robin Lehner and Laurent Brossoit. Neither was very good (or even good) this season and having a team being able to limit shots and chances at an elite rate should help a lot. They still need to play well but this should be a big step in the right direction.

For fantasy purposes, it's an open question how much Cassidy can help this team on the offensive end. Our first note here is that Boston did spread out TOI. Jack Eichel skated 19:24 a game for Vegas, and that was fresh off a year-long layoff that included neck surgery. Boston did not have a single forward surpass that mark in either of the last two seasons. We could point to the age of the players and maybe wanting to keep them fresh for the playoffs, but Mark Stone, Max Pacioretty, William Karlsson, and Jonathan Marchessault will all be at least in their age-30 season in 2022-23. It would not be surprising to see their top-6 forwards all near the same TOI, around the 17- to 19-minute range. Not having monster minutes for any forward is something we'll need to keep in mind for draft season.

All told, this seems like a good hire. They need a coach who will command respect from the veterans and knows how to approach postseason play. Cassidy has those attributes. Whether this is a boon to the forwards from a fantasy perspective is up for debate, but it should help their goaltenders.