Late-season hire John Tortorella has Vegas in the Stanley Cup Final, poised to join an elite group

The late-season move by the Vegas Golden Knights to fire coach Bruce Cassidy and bring on John Tortorella might have seemed to be out of desperation on the surface. It comes with a history of some success.

Tortorella has guided the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final after completing a sweep against Presidents’ Trophy winning Colorado on Tuesday night. He now has a chance to become the eighth coach to win the Cup after taking over in the middle of a season.

Five of those previous times have come since 2000 with Larry Robinson's run with New Jersey Devils that year the most similar to Tortorella's as he also took over with just eight games remaining in the 1999-00 season. The others all had much more time to put their imprints on the team.

Tortorella took over after the Golden Knights lost six of seven games in March. Vegas went 7-0-1 down the stretch and has rolled through the Western Conference playoffs with a 12-4 record.

The last team to win it all after firing its coach during the season was St. Louis in 2018-19 when Craig Berube took over from Mike Yeo early in the season. Kris Knoblauch came one win short of doing it in 2023-24 with Edmonton, losing Game 7 of the Final to Florida that season.

If Tortorella can finish the job and lead the Golden Knights to their second title, the six times that has happened in the NHL since 2000 would equal the total times that has happened in the NFL (0), NBA (4) and Major League Baseball (2) combined in their long histories.

It happened just twice in the NHL in the 20th century with Toronto’s Dick Irwin (1932) and Montreal’s Al MacNeil (1971) doing it before becoming more frequent of late.

The NBA coaches to win a title after taking over during the season are Paul Westhead in 1980 for the Lakers, Pat Riley two years later for Los Angeles and again in 2006 with Miami, and Tyronn Lue in 2016 with Cleveland. The two managers to win a World Series after being hired during the season are Jack McKeon with the Florida Marlins in 2003 and Bob Lemon with the Yankees in 1978.

Here's a closer look at the five most recent coaches who have led their teams to Stanley Cup titles after taking over during a season:

Yeo was fired 19 games into the 2018-19 season and replaced by Berube. St. Louis dropped to last in the standings in early January before putting together an impressive run.

The Blues finished second in the Central Division and rallied from a 3-2 series deficit in the second round to beat Dallas in double overtime in Game 7. They then overcame a 2-1 series deficit in the conference final to beat San Jose in six games to make their first Stanley Cup Final since 1970.

There, Berube led St. Louis to a seven-game series win over Boston for the franchise’s first championship.

The Penguins were sputtering early in the 2015-16 season and looked poised to waste another year of Sidney Crosby’s prime when they fired Mike Johnston and promoted Sullivan from the AHL.

Fueled by some key midseason additions and brilliant play from Crosby, Pittsburgh surged into the playoffs and didn’t slow down from there. The Penguins lost three games combined in the first two rounds and then rallied from 3-2 down in the conference final to beat Tampa Bay.

They overwhelmed San Jose in a six-game series and hoisted the Stanley Cup for the second time in Crosby’s career.

The Kings were mired in 11th place in the West in December and struggling to score when they fired Terry Murray and eventually brought Sutter off his farm in Alberta for his first coaching job in more than five years.

Sutter’s blunt style and attention to detail proved to be just what the Kings needed and helped them reach the playoffs as the eighth seed. They raced through the playoffs, upsetting top-seeded Vancouver in five games in the first round and winning 15 of their first 17 playoff contests.

Los Angeles eventually finished off New Jersey in six games for its first championship and the Kings’ four losses were tied for the second fewest in a Cup-winning run since the first round went to best-of-seven in 1987.

After making it to the final in 2008, the Penguins were barely over .500 in February the next season, leading GM Ray Shero to fire Michel Therrien and promote Bylsma from the AHL.

Pittsburgh went 18-3-4 down the stretch to earn the fourth seed in the East. From there, the Penguins survived tough series against Philadelphia and Washington before sweeping Carolina in the conference final.

That set the stage for a rematch against Detroit and Pittsburgh came out on top this time, winning Game 7 on the road for the franchise’s first title since 1992.

The Devils were in first place in the East and had the third-best record in the NHL with eight games left in the regular season when GM Lou Lamoriello made the shocking decision to fire Robby Ftorek and promote Robinson from his role as an assistant.

New Jersey had won only one playoff series the previous four seasons and were stumbling late in 2000 when Lamoriello decided a change was needed.

Boy, was he right.

Robinson increased practice time and stressed a commitment to defense that paid off in a playoff run that featured a comeback from 3-1 down in the conference final against Philadelphia and a 2-1 double-overtime clincher on the road in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final against defending champion Dallas.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Vegas Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella looks on during the first period in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

FILE - Los Angeles Kings head coach Darryl Sutter talks to his team during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Jan. 7, 2012, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)

FILE - New Jersey Devils head coach Larry Robinson carries the Stanley Cup from the bus as the team arrives back in East Rutherford, N.J., June 11, 2000. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer)

FILE - St. Louis Blues coach Craig Berube carries the Stanley Cup after the Blues defeated the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Final in Boston, June 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two key senators involved in a long-simmering debate over fixing college sports will introduce a bipartisan bill designed to break a congressional logjam that would regulate payments to players, limit them to one “free” transfer over their careers and create a “Lane Kiffin Rule” to restrict coach movement during the season.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., the chair and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees college sports, briefed The Associated Press on details of the bill they crafted in hopes it can get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.

“This is a stability bill, not just an NIL bill,” Cruz said, referencing the name, image and likeness payments that have led to football rosters with $30 million payrolls and reshaped the industry.

Cantwell said she and Cruz teamed up on the legislation "because he and I really do believe the college sports system is in a bit of chaos.”

The bill looks very much like the “best of” from a pair of legislative proposals — one called SCORE, another called SAFE — that have gone nowhere over the past several months. It contains two elements the NCAA has supported: a limited antitrust exemption and a clause that would preempt much of the patchwork of state laws currently regulating NIL.

Meredith Page, the chair of the NCAA Division I Student Athlete Advocacy Committee and a former volleyball player at Radford, called the bill “a phenomenal step,” especially after the latest setback for the SCORE Act, which the SAAC also supported.

“I think this has lots of great protections and gives the ability for us to stablize the field that is so, so unstable right now,” Page said.

NCAA President Charlie Baker said the association was reviewing the bill and looked forward to “further productive dialogue with members of Congress.”

College sports has been looking to Washington for help as it grapples with rising costs of paying players and an out-of-control transfer portal that have threatened smaller sports, many involving women, that make up the backbone of the U.S. Olympic pipeline.

This bill, called the Protect College Sports Act, would offer what Cruz and Cantwell said was targeted antitrust protection for the likes of the NCAA and the College Sports Commission, which was part of the largely Republican-backed SCORE Act that many Democrats opposed. That would be in exchange for what Cruz said would be “public-facing protections" for athletes in several areas, including guarantees for health insurance and scholarships, more stringent regulations for NIL deals from third parties and agents who broker their deals.

“I think it's better predictability,” Cantwell said. “Why did we do it? Because when you've got thousands of athletes being cut, hundreds of programs being cut, the risk to the whole infrastructure was too high to not try to get better predictability.”

The bill would limit players to one unrestricted transfer over the course of their college careers — a widely supported idea across the country — and would adopt something close to the five-year eligibility period that the NCAA appears ready to enact next month.

The bill also tries to regulate coaching movement. Kiffin's sudden move to LSU from rival Mississippi while the Rebels were preparing for the College Football Playoff last season put a fine point on an issue that has only gotten worse in an era where teams spend millions to fill out rapidly shifting football rosters: Schools have less patience (and more money) to devote to hiring coaches for a quick fix.

Under terms of the bill, midseason coaching changes would be prohibited.

“It's not fair or right to poach a coach in the middle of the season while the team is still competing," Cruz said. "There’s a reason the NFL has a rule that you can’t do that. Obviously, NFL teams hire coaches away from each other but they don’t do so in the middle of the season.”

The bill would rework the Sports Broadcasting Act to allow conferences to pool their TV rights — a move proponents have said could add billions of dollars to the ecosystem in a conclusion the Southeastern and Big Ten Conferences believe is inaccurate.

The senators said leagues wouldn't be required to join the media pooling but those that do would have to use a percentage of any increase from that to support women's and Olympic sports. That alone could be a dealbreaker for the SEC, which has reportedly been discussing topics including breaking away from the NCAA and allowing collective bargaining for athletes at its league meetings in Florida this week.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, along with Jim Phillips of the Atlantic Coast and Brett Yormark of the Big 12 all said they were reviewing the bill, with Sankey saying “bipartisan engagement in Washington on these issues is critical.”

The SCORE Act, which garnered little support from Democrats, was on the House schedule last week but was abruptly pulled off when the Congressional Black Caucus and NAACP came out against it. Even if it had squeaked by in the razor-tight House, it had virtually no chance of passing as written in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to break a possible filibuster.

“The Congressional Black Caucus and I have the same objective: stop the ‘SEC SCORE Act,’” said Cantwell, referencing the SEC as one of dozens of conferences who have supported that bill.

Some Democrats were reluctant to support a bill, like SCORE, that prohibited college athletes from being classified as employees of their schools. The new bill takes what Cantwell said was a neutral stance on the issue of employment.

But it does not resolve all of Democrats' complaints, as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., explained in a news release shortly after news of the bill hit.

“It gives the NCAA an antitrust exemption that no other industry gets just so they can keep underpaying the athletes,” he said. "Sure, there are some good things for players in this bill, but this seems like a great deal for the NCAA and the rich guys who run college sports, and a bad deal for athletes.”

Mit Winter, a Missouri attorney who specializes in sports law, said the proposal was so sprawling he was skeptical it will pass as is.

“When you start getting into the stuff about giving the CSC and NCAA antitrust exemptions and liability protection from enforcing rules on athlete denial of compensation, I think that’s where things get a little more dicey,” he said.

AP College Sports Writer Eric Olson contributed.

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

FILE - Big Ten Conference Commissioner Tony Petitti speaks during an news conference at the Big Ten Conference NCAA college football media days at Lucas Oil Stadium, July 26, 2023, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)

FILE - Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Gabriela Passos, File)