Lightning coach Jon Cooper at 10 years: Inside a rare NHL run and a message that doesnt seem t

The toughest speech Jon Cooper has ever given his Lightning team was the first one.

It was 10 years ago today, just after the Lightning won their first game after head coach Guy Boucher was fired. Cooper, who had led the team’s AHL affiliate, Norfolk, to a Calder Cup the season before, flew in that afternoon and watched from a suite.

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Assistant general manager Julien BriseBois had picked Cooper up from the airport. He tried to keep things light, joking how the travel, the food — everything — would be better in the NHL. “You’ll drive a better car,” he said. As Cooper pulled up to Amalie Arena, it finally sank in.

“Wow, this is really happening.”

The press conference he gave the local media before the game was a breeze. He told them he wanted his team to be a blend between the bruising 1970s Flyers and high-flying 1980s Oilers. But Cooper was more nervous about the postgame talk with players.

The dressing room was packed for it, with players either in their suits or postgame workout clothes and sitting in their stalls. The training, equipment and hockey ops staff also squeezed in.

Cooper had given intro speeches a half-dozen times in previous stops, from his first coaching job at a high school in Lansing, Mich., to teams in Texarkana, Green Bay, Wis., and Norfolk, Va. But this was different. These weren’t kids. It was future Hall of Famer Martin St. Louis. Captain Vinny Lecavalier. Future cornerstones Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman.

GM Steve Yzerman introduced Cooper, telling the group there’d been a leadership change. The next time they made changes, it’d be to the roster. The Hall of Famer had Cooper’s back from the start. All eyes were glued on Cooper, wearing a suit, no tie and a striped shirt unbuttoned at the top.

“The silence was deafening,” Cooper remembers.

The speech was short, about five minutes, but it was memorable. He brought up his background, having started on Wall Street and as a lawyer. He told the team it needed to be close — do everything together. He said they were going to have fun, with coaches allowing music in the dressing room before games and between periods.

And then there was the kicker.

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“He told our team it was missing something — and that was swagger,” Stamkos says. “And he had that to him. He said this group was eventually going to get there.”

“He was convincing,” adds St. Louis, now an NHL head coach himself in Montreal. “I felt good about it. I can say that.”

Swagger or not, nobody — not even Cooper — envisioned what was coming. Four trips to the Stanley Cup Final in 10 years. Two Stanley Cups. No coach in NHL history has more wins at their 10-year anniversary with a team than Cooper’s 476, according to NHL Stats. The list of coaches who spent their full first decade with the same franchise is just 11 deep, including the likes of Toe Blake, Jack Adams and Barry Trotz — and Cooper has the most wins of anyone on it. The only coaches to have more combined regular season and playoff wins over any 10-year span are Arbour and Scotty Bowman. There may never be another coach who wins 11 consecutive playoff series.

In the modern game, where there are routinely a half-dozen coaching changes every summer, Cooper has become the standard of stability.

Every coach has a shelf life. Everybody except Cooper, it seems. We may never see this again.

“I don’t think we will,” says Bruce Boudreau, who has 617 wins in his 16 NHL seasons behind the bench. “Ten years in one place in the NHL is unheard of.”

Adds Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman: “Jeez, that’s a long time. It’s not easy.”

And Cup-winning coach Ken Hitchcock: “If you last more than three years, you’re doing great.”

There are many reasons Cooper has made it this far. The level of success, of course, will keep you there. Cooper is the first to credit his staff, players and leadership group for being an extension of him in the dressing room. “I’ve surrounded myself with people much smarter than me,” he says. But coaches like Trotz and Hitchcock say Cooper’s case should be a lesson for other NHL teams on the partnership between a coach and management.

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“It’s a great lesson,” Trotz says, “in patience.”

When Yzerman decided to fire Boucher, he asked BriseBois to help come up with a list of potential replacements.

They went over pros and cons for the candidates. Lindy Ruff’s name was one that surfaced in reports at the time.

“But at the end, we knew Coop was the guy,” BriseBois says.

BriseBois had hired Cooper a few years earlier to lead Norfolk, having received a serendipitous tip on him from an agent. A summer before that, Cooper had interviewed with the Capitals and Oilers. He didn’t get those jobs and admits now he wasn’t ready for them.

“You realize how incredibly blessed you are to be at the right place at the right time,” Cooper says. “If I go to one of the other teams, would it have all worked out? I don’t know. It might have. But I wouldn’t want to take the chance to find out.”

Bowman, who himself never spent 10 years in one spot, points out that as a coach coming in, it’s important where the team is at in its contention cycle. The Lightning weren’t a playoff team when Cooper took over. They had a unique blend of veterans like St. Louis and Lecavalier, top picks in Stamkos and Hedman and a half dozen young stars-in-the-making from Cooper’s AHL championship team.

They would go on to make the playoffs in Cooper’s first season and the Cup Final in his second.

“He came at the right time in Tampa,” Bowman says. “They were just starting out their run. The team kept getting better, and he coached a lot of the players in the minors. It was just a great fit.”

It wasn’t easy, though. Cooper had to make hard decisions to scratch veterans like Eric Brewer and Ryan Malone. He had to get buy-in from veterans like St. Louis. The kids — Cooper’s kids — were taking players’ jobs.

“That was difficult,” Cooper says. “Guys that paved the road before — the blood, sweat and tears to carry the Tampa Bay Lightning for a period — you’re disrupting that. I was brand new to the league, and many people are looking at you. Your resume doesn’t dictate you can do this, but you have to. If you don’t have (the veterans) in your corner, you’re not getting anybody. Marty was the backbone.”

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Until he wasn’t there anymore. St. Louis requested a trade at the 2014 deadline, with the Lightning acquiring Ryan Callahan from the Rangers in exchange. They made the playoffs but were unceremoniously swept by the Canadiens in the first round.

“I’m like ‘Oh my gosh,’ this is a whole different beast,” Cooper says. “I remember we were down 0-2 in the series, and we come into their building and it’s bedlam. It was thunderous. Eleven seconds after puck drop, Rene Bourque scores. I’m like, ‘Oh s—. We’re in trouble.’”

The 2014-15 season would be pivotal for Cooper and the team, with a surprise trip to the Stanley Cup Final. Cooper had won at every level, but that trip was his NHL validation.

Had the Lightning lost in the first round again — they were down 2-1 to the Red Wings before an epic, Tyler Johnson-led comeback in Game 4 — who knows if Cooper and his staff would still be around.

“That was a game-changer,” Cooper says. “That year established me as a coach. You have the history of winning, and in 2014 you get swept, and that was embarrassing. It had never happened to me before. The fact we went all the way to within two wins of the Cup, it helped me, my confidence.”

“That helped put a stamp on it, put a stamp on it with the players.”

Cooper was walking along the NHL Draft floor in Vancouver in June 2019 when he got a pep talk he needed.

The Lightning had gotten stunningly swept by the Blue Jackets in the first round of the playoffs after having won 62 games and the Presidents’ Trophy. They were then a running joke at the NHL Awards, with comedian Kenan Thompson taking shots.

Cooper was humbled and embarrassed. Then he ran into then-Sharks coach Pete DeBoer at the draft.

“I just wanted to tell you, this s— happens,” Cooper remembers DeBoer telling him. “Don’t change a thing. Stick to your convictions. This is a hiccup in the road. Don’t blow it up. You guys will be fine.”

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The difference between Cooper and so many other coaches is he got the chance to stick with it.

BriseBois insisted at the time he wasn’t going to “blow up” the roster or coaching staff. Cooper had signed a three-year extension that spring, and BriseBois’ line was, “Why look for the next Jon Cooper when we already have the original?”

BriseBois felt the 2019 sweep was a “collective fail” and everyone should shoulder the responsibility.

“I think coaches get blamed for a lot more stuff than things they actually have control over,” BriseBois says. “We should be more patient with our coaches and understand what they do control and evaluate them (by that). There should definitely be more long-tenured coaches out there.”

Hitchcock credits the Lightning for sticking with Cooper.

“Coaches have a tough time surviving the transition phase of your team,” says Hitchcock, who won 849 games in his career and a Stanley Cup with the Stars but also was fired multiple times. “In Dallas, we went on a big run there for quite a few years, and all of a sudden a bunch of guys retired and we were in the middle of forming chemistry and it was rocky. It’s at that rocky stage where a lot of good coaches get fired.

“There are coaches that get a job and get fired and can’t hang on. And there are coaches that win, have success and have trouble trying to duplicate it, and in that process, they lose their jobs. It takes patience, it takes time, and it is really tough.”

Trotz likens the collaboration and communication that Cooper has with BriseBois to the relationship he had for years in Nashville with David Poile. There were times when Trotz thought he was on the ropes, but he recalls Poile telling players, “He’s not going anywhere. We’re fixing it right here. The situation is in the room.”

“A team will go through a losing streak, and everyone is calling for the coach’s head — where you know the solution is in the dressing room,” says Trotz, who recently took over for Poile as Predators GM. “The coach has got to work through it.

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“Too many times, some organizations cave to the pressure of the media, the fans, the outside noise. And it doesn’t strengthen the team; it weakens the team.”

There was plenty of “outside noise” with Trotz’s Capitals teams after several failed playoff performances. He points out that there aren’t many teams that win a Cup without two or three “devastating series losses.” The mid-1990s Red Wings. The Capitals. The Lightning. That’s why, when the hockey world was laughing at Cooper at the 2019 NHL Awards, Trotz told him, there was “light at the end of the tunnel” and “You don’t realize how close you are.”

BriseBois credits owner Jeff Vinik for understanding the “randomness” of the sport and how the odds are stacked against any team winning the Cup.

“If I’m being honest and self-evaluating myself, if it’s not for Steve Yzerman, Julien BriseBois and Jeff Vinik and their unfettered support of what myself and our staff was doing, then none of this would have worked,” Cooper says. “I probably wouldn’t be here anymore. There are a lot of good coaches out there. But I believe when you have that support from management and ownership, that’s what makes good coaches great.”

Stamkos laughs when he thinks back to Cooper’s first speech — the guy not many of them knew just walking in and talking about bringing them swagger.

But Stamkos admits now, Cooper was right. And it’s taken a lot more than confidence for Cooper to build trust and buy-in. Stamkos thinks he’s been among the coaches who have changed the dynamic throughout the league between players and coaches.

“He was never a big yeller or screamer,” Stamkos says. “He let the guys do what they wanted, in terms of the music and preparation, as long as on the ice you put out the effort.”

Cooper’s philosophy has always been “culture over strategy,” and he credits Stamkos and the leadership group with building and maintaining the standard. The key, Cooper believes, is showing players you care. They’ll see right through you if you’re not genuine. You treat everyone fairly, but not every player the same.

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There’s always “give and take,” Stamkos says, between Cooper and the players, whether it’s discussing practice plans or days off. A big part of the team culture is accountability, and when that’s enforced by the leaders, it makes it stick more.

“I think a talent of mine is being able to read the room, but you don’t always read it correctly,” Cooper says. “That’s when you have guys like Stammer and the leadership group to help you through it. … A dictatorship doesn’t work. Do you have to make the final decisions? I do. I don’t do them by knee-jerk reaction. I’ve thought about it and communicated with players before anything.”

When Cooper benched his three top offensive players — Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Stamkos — for the third period of a loss in Buffalo a few weeks ago, it blew up in the media. Cooper points out that the team has played in the Cup Final more times the past eight years than times he’s sat those players but also that the team does need to uphold its standards, from the top down. “If anyone think that (benching) was a chink in the armor in Tampa,” he says, “they’re sorely mistaken.”

The Lightning don’t win back-to-back Cups if Kucherov doesn’t go transform his two-way game and leadership. They don’t hoist hockey’s holy grail if Stamkos doesn’t evolve into one of the greatest all-time captains.

It started with the 2019 humbling defeat and meetings that summer about a “non-negotiable” commitment to team over self.

“He’ll go down as a Hall of Fame coach,” says Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde, a Lightning assistant the previous four years. “But he’ll never get enough credit for that uncanny ability — behind closed doors — to manage a group in today’s age, where the bully coach no longer has a place. He has the uncanny ability to hold guys accountable in a modern way. He holds superstars accountable, gives them a little rope to play their game and within the team structure. It’s not easy.”

And it’s led to a shelf life that is the envy of most coaches. Pittsburgh’s Mike Sullivan is the next longest-tenured coach at eight years. Jared Bednar is at seven with Colorado and may get to 10.

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Boudreau, who spent five years in Washington and Anaheim and four in Minnesota, knows how challenging it is.

“Sometimes the message gets old,” he says. “It doesn’t seem to get old in Tampa, which is amazing.”

Cooper signed a three-year extension last year that takes him through the 2024-25 season. His biggest regret is missing so much of his kids’ lives — his twin daughters Julia and Josie are 14 years old, his son, Jonny, is 12. He jokes he arrived in Tampa when he was feeding them with a spoon and now they’re texting him their UberEats orders.

But Cooper still feels like he has a lot of coaching left.

“As long as the thing that drives me — the fire and competition and chance to win a Stanley Cup — and that burns as bright today as it did in 2013,” Cooper says. “As long as I still have that, I’m still going.

“And I’d stay with his organization forever if I could.”

By the numbers

Courtesy of NHL Stats

The decade club

Coaches who spent their first 10 years with the same franchise, ranked by wins in those 10 years:

* Coached the Detroit Cougars, Detroit Falcons and Detroit Red Wings

Best 10-year stretches

Coaches with 400-plus wins through their first 10 years with a franchise (but not necessarily their first franchise):

Immediate (and sustained) playoff success

Coaches with the most playoff wins in their first 10 (or fewer) years with a franchise (but not necessarily their first franchise):

— The Athletic’s Ian Mendes contributed reporting to this story.

(Photo: Mike Carlson / Getty Images)

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