The NHL announced that Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy was the winner of the Jack Adams Award for the league’s top coach Wednesday night.
Cassidy guided the Bruins to the President’s Trophy with the league’s best record before the coronavirus pandemic halted play in mid-March. With a 44-14-12 record, Boston had 100 points on the year and was the only team to do so during the regular season.
Cassidy beat out Columbus’ John Tortorella and Philadelphia’s Alain Vigneault for the award, finishing with 37 first-place votes. The Blue Jackets played their way to a surprising 33-22-15 record while the Flyers finished second in the Metropolitan division, earning the No. 1 seed in the restart.
The award comes on the heels of a season in which Cassidy led the Bruins to the Stanley Cup Final. The 2019-20 campaign didn’t feature quite the same postseason success, but Boston’s dominant regular season earned Cassidy the award.
Despite the strong regular season, the Bruins faltered in the playoffs, losing in the second round to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The fourth-year head coach had previously been nominated in 2018 when he finished in second place. In his three full seasons at the helm for Boston, the Bruins have topped the 100-point threshold each season—including the shortened season this year.
