Tom King

Here are a few tids and bits, tourney or otherwise, as we try to survive a busy high school championship weekend:

– Bruce Cassidy, you got robbed. Bruce Cassidy, you probably should’ve been fired.

Which is it?

A little of both. The former Bruins coach was tremendous in winning regular season games and got the B’s to the Cup Finals in 2019, one bad first period away from perhaps the team’s second Cup in eight years.

But you knew when Bruins president Cam Neely made his end of season remarks, with a couple of jabs taken at Cassidy, that he was toast. But here’s when the first hint came: Back in December, when WEEI radio host Greg Hill reported that Cassidy and captain Patrice Bergeron got into it after Cassidy had publicly lambasted Bergeron teammate Matt Grzelcyk.

Many have forgotten about that, but one of the things you can bet Neely didn’t like was Cassidy’s penchant for being too honest with the media, calling out his players.

The Bruins appear to want someone who is better at coaching younger players, but they had no problems entrusting Cassidy with the Providence Bruins of the AHL for five years, right?

Either way, with that in mind, we say a favorite for the Bruins job will be former Rangers and Boston University coach David Quinn. Quinn guided the New York rebuild until the team needed someone to take it to the next level. Problem is, the B’s don’t look like they’re in full rebuild mode. We’ll see. Just remember this: six years is an eternity for a coach for any NHL team. Bruce Cassidy will be just fine.

– The Nashua Silver Knights started the season out slowly – not quite as slow as last year – but again had that same problem when they had to wait for veterans to arrive, not able to have their top players to start the season.

But we still maintain that there are just too many incoming freshmen in the Futures League. The league should cap them at three allowed on rosters at any given time. The Silver Knights as of earlier this week had six on their roster. Some are on temporary deals, but there are others coming in, most notably Pinkerton’s Liam Doyle once the Astros season ends. He’s worth one of three spots. But still, six is way too many to start the season, we say.

– Meanwhile, talking about youth, the Silver Knights hit it out of the park this past week with their Education Day. The announced crowd of 3,254 was a sign of all the off-season work that was done to do one thing: sell, sell, sell.

And the response from the local schools was great. It was hands down the best Yellow Bus Day for the team, which at last look was second in the league in attendance. It will be interesting to see what the fan response is after school gets out soon as well.

– The tourney season is simply off the chain, with thrilling tennis finals, some upsets, and great competiton. Thus far locally as of this writing there are two local team champions (Alvirne girls tennis and Bishop Guertin girls lacrosse) and we will have a few vying for titles over the current weekend. A lot of attention will be on the Hollis Brookline baseball team, which is scheduled to take on St. Thomas of Dover in the Division II finals on Saturday night at Manchester’s Northeast Delta Dental Stadium. An interesting note:

The Cavaliers won their first ever baseball crown 30 years ago, beating Franklin, 5-1. The current Cavs have an infielder named Gavin Knudsen, whose father, Bob, played on that 1992 team. Like father, like son, they hope.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on twitter @Telegraph _TomK.