The Vegas Golden Knights announced a sudden coaching change Sunday, firing head coach Bruce Cassidy and naming veteran NHL coach John Tortorella as his replacement with eight games left in the 2025-26 regular season.
General manager Kelly McCrimmon confirmed the move on March 29, one day after the team lost its third straight game and six of its previous seven. Vegas holds a 32-26-16 record and 80 points and sits third in the Pacific Division, which has been described as the NHL’s weakest division this season.
“We thank Bruce Cassidy for his dedication to our hockey club and community over the past four seasons,” McCrimmon said in a statement. “Under Bruce’s leadership, we reached our ultimate goal in 2023 by bringing a Stanley Cup to Vegas. Bruce will forever be remembered with the utmost regard by our organization for what was accomplished here.”
“With the stretch run of the 2025-26 regular season upon us, we believe that a change is necessary for us to return to the level of play that is expected of our club,” he continued. “With John Tortorella, we bring in a Stanley Cup Champion as well as one of the most experienced and respected coaches in the NHL. His guidance will be a great asset to our team at the pivotal point in the season we currently face. We look forward to welcoming John to Vegas.”
The Golden Knights have won only three of their last 10 games. Their two most recent defeats came in overtime, including an overtime loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday and a shootout loss to the Washington Capitals on Saturday. Since the Olympic break, Vegas has posted a 5-10-2 record, the second-worst in the NHL during that span, although the team still holds a four-point lead over the Los Angeles Kings in the Pacific Division.
Cassidy joined Vegas in 2022 and guided the franchise to the Stanley Cup championship in his first season in 2023. He led the team to the playoffs in each of his three seasons with the club and leaves with a 178-99-43 record and a 24-16 postseason mark.
The Golden Knights franchise, founded by owner and chairman Bill Foley and operated by Black Knight Sports and Entertainment LLC, has maintained strong results since entering the league. Vegas became the most successful expansion franchise in North American professional sports in the 2017-18 season and has missed the playoffs once in its nine-year history, failing to qualify in 2022. That season led to the dismissal of coach Peter DeBoer, who was replaced by Cassidy.
Tortorella takes over immediately and will coach the final eight games of the regular season before leading the team into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The 67-year-old begins his 24th season as an NHL head coach.
He last coached in the NHL with the Philadelphia Flyers from 2022 to 2025. The Flyers fired him with nine games remaining in the 2024-25 season after he had spent three seasons with the club. During that season, he had a heated verbal exchange with one of his players and publicly said he was “not really interested in learning how to coach” during a losing campaign.
Philadelphia replaced him with Rick Tocchet, who played 11 of his 18 NHL seasons with the Flyers. In Tocchet’s first season behind the bench, Philadelphia has a 36-24-12 record entering Sunday night’s game against the Dallas Stars. The Flyers have 84 points and trail the Columbus Blue Jackets, who hold the second Eastern Conference wild-card position with 87 points. Philadelphia trails the Detroit Red Wings and Ottawa Senators by two points in the wild-card standings.
The Flyers are coming off a 5-3 victory over the Red Wings on Saturday night, with Owen Tippett recording a hat trick. On Sunday, the organization also signed 2025 first-round pick Porter Martone to a three-year entry-level contract.
Tortorella did not coach an NHL team this season. He served as an assistant coach for the United States at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, where the Americans won a gold medal alongside Golden Knights forward Jack Eichel and defenseman Noah Hanifin, ending a 46-year Olympic gold medal drought for the United States.
His international coaching experience also includes serving as an assistant at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, when the United States won a silver medal. He was also on USA Hockey’s coaching staff for the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off and served as head coach at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey and the 2008 IIHF Men’s World Championship.
Tortorella’s NHL coaching career includes stops with the Tampa Bay Lightning from 2000 to 2008, the New York Rangers from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2013, the Vancouver Canucks during the 2013-14 season, the Columbus Blue Jackets from 2015 to 2021, and the Flyers from 2022 to 2025.
He won the Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004 and earned the Jack Adams Award as the league’s top coach that same year. After the 2016-17 season with Columbus, he received the Jack Adams Award again, becoming one of four coaches in NHL history to win the award with two different teams.
His teams captured division titles in the 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2011-12 seasons, reached the conference finals in 2003-04 and 2011-12, and advanced to the Stanley Cup Final in 2003-04. During his tenure with the Blue Jackets, he led the franchise to its first appearance in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2019.
Across his career, Tortorella has coached 1,620 NHL games, ranking sixth all-time and first among coaches born in the United States. His 770 career wins rank ninth among all NHL head coaches and are the second-most among American coaches.
As the season approaches its final games, Vegas faces performance issues even though the team’s analytics remain strong. During the last 17 games, the Golden Knights have recorded a 58.6 percent expected goals share at five-on-five, the highest in the NHL over that stretch, according to Natural Stat Trick. The team has also ranked first in preventing expected goals against and sits within the league’s top six in expected goals created on offense.
Scoring results have not matched those numbers. Vegas has converted 6.81 percent of its shots at five-on-five during the slump, the lowest rate in the NHL.
Several leading players have experienced scoring droughts. Tomas Hertl has not scored since March 4. Mark Stone has two goals since Feb. 27, both in the same game. Mitch Marner and Jack Eichel have combined for two goals in the last eight games.
Goaltending has also been a problem throughout the season. The Golden Knights have started four goaltenders, who together have allowed 30.6 goals above expected, according to Natural Stat Trick. Adin Hill has surrendered 16.2 goals above average and has posted a .734 save percentage on high-danger shots despite playing behind one of the league’s strongest defensive environments.
