Vegas will have to grant permission for Oilers to negotiate with Cassidy: NHL insider
This in from Sportsnet insider Elliotte Friedman, his take that if Bruce Cassidy wants to sign as head coach in Los Angeles or Edmonton, the Vegas Golden Knights will eventually have to let him go.
On the 32 Thoughts podcast, Friedman first made clear his thoughts on how this story got out.
“I don’t think the Oilers leaked this… What does Batman always say? Who benefits? Oilers don’t benefit from this getting out. So it wasn’t them. Now, I don’t know who the source was… But I feel very confident in saying it wasn’t Edmonton. I think, Kyle, you have to work under the assumption that it’s going to get out. Yes, I do. I think you have to operate under that way of thinking. Be paranoid. Be pleasantly surprised if it’s a secret, but don’t expect it to be a secret. And I’ll say this, too. Permission should be granted for both the Kings and the Oilers.”
One theory about why permission may not yet have been granted is that Vegas wants to make sure it won’t have to cover any of Cassidy’s $4.5 million on his contract for next season. One executive told Friedman that he wondered if Vegas simply wants a guarantee that if Edmonton or LA hires Cassidy, those teams have to pay all of Cassidy’s salary and Vegas won’t have to pay anything. “That’s purely a guess, but that was an educated guess,” Friedman said of the hold-up, then added: “Ultimately though, the league has indicated before that you better have a good reason for denying somebody permission. So unless Cassidy doesn’t want to coach the Oilers or the Kings, sooner or later, unless there’s a good reason that we don’t know about, they’re going to have to grant permission.”
My take: It’s good to get more clarity here and count on Friedman to provide it. He’s second to no one in the NHL when it comes to describing the ins and outs of the NHL’s rules and unwritten rules of conduct.
