The Oilers may have exposed the crack that ended Bruce Cassidy in Vegas

NHL.com reported Sunday that the Golden Knights fired Cassidy and hired John Tortorella after a 32-26-16 start and an 8-15-4 slide since January 19.

Now circle back to the post below.

If Elliotte Friedman's note about that tense meeting after Game 5 is on the mark, the Oilers weren't just a playoff opponent. They were the pressure test that exposed the crack.

Edmonton ended Vegas' 2025 run in five games, and that clincher was a 1-0 overtime loss in their own building. That kind of exit doesn't just sting for a week. It sits in a room all summer.

Knoblauch's group didn't just beat Cassidy on the scoreboard. They forced Vegas into the kind of series where every shift felt tight, every mistake got magnified, and the coach-player relationship had nowhere to hide.

This month only added to it. Edmonton beat Vegas 4-2 on March 8, then beat them 4-3 in overtime on March 26. Those weren't empty regular-season points. They were reminders.

Vegas sits at 80 points, while Edmonton is at 83, so this was never about a dead team. It was about a contender that looked worn down in the wrong places.

Edmonton plays with star power, but the part that matters here is the grind. The Oilers made Vegas defend in layers, pushed pace through the middle, and kept dragging their bench into stressful hockey.

That's where coaches get judged hardest. Not in October. In a series where your group stops looking free.

Cassidy won big in Vegas. Nobody can touch that banner. But once the Oilers got inside that matchup and stayed there, the relationship looked like it started burning from the edges inward.

For Oilers fans, this isn't old news dressed up. It's proof that Edmonton didn't just survive Vegas last spring.

They changed them.