Thursday night, the National Hockey League handed out another piece of hardware and one of the members of the Boston Bruins organization actually, surprisingly found his way to getting one vote.
During Game 3 of the Semifinal round series between the Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Islanders on Long Island, the NHL announced the winner of the Jack Adams Award, which is given to the league’s top coach, voted on by the National Hockey League Broadcaster Association.
Carolina Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour won the award running away from the rest of the field, collecting 433 votes, 202 more voted than Dean Evason of Minnesota Wild who finished second. Brind’Amour had 61 first-place votes and 37 second-place votes. Florida Panthers bench boss Joel Quenneville finished third with 225 votes for leading his team to a second-place finish in the Central Division.
After the top-three, there was some interesting voting. Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins finished with the most votes among the Bruins’ 2020-21 realigned East Division opponents with 86 votes, after leading the Pens to a first-place finish.
Last season, Boston Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy won the award for leading the Black and Gold to the most points in the shortened 70-game season because of the coronavirus pandemic with 100. Cassidy beat out Alain Vigneault of the Philadelphia Flyers and former Columbus Blue Jackets bench boss John Tortorella.
This season, Cassidy finished tied for 11th with one second-place vote, good enough for three points. Who was he tied with? That would be David Quinn of the New York Rangers, who was fired following this season. The former Boston University coach was under fire most of this season for the Rangers struggling to get into playoff position.
It wasn’t the smoothest of seasons for Cassidy either. He had to make some of his players that he was counting on for scoring healthy scratches for games, as well as dealing with an insane amount of injuries and COVID-19 shutdowns to some of his top players.
The fact that Cassidy even got one second-place vote is surprising. It probably came from Jack Edwards. Regardless, Cassidy is more worried about general manager Don Sweeney putting together a roster to compete for the Stanley Cup in 2022 than winning a second consecutive award.