'We're all in this together': Jon Cooper on keeping the Lightning band together for more runs at the Cup

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TAMPA, Fla. — As Jon Cooper walks down the hallway of the Tampa Bay Lightning dressing room, reminders of what he calls the "monster we've created" are all over the walls.

There are images of the Lightning's entry into a decade-long run of Stanley Cup contention, from the Tyler Johnson, Triplets-led group in 2015 to the back-to-back Cup winners.

Before stepping into the team lounge for a coffee, Cooper stops to peek at the nine miniature replica trophies of either a Stanley Cup, Prince of Wales Trophy or Presidents' Trophy. They're each hanging in a case.

"When I got here," he says. "There were two."

And for Cooper, this is not where it ends.

He's adamant — doubters be damned — that this accomplished and aging core has a few more kicks left at the can. Or the Cup.

The doubt, Cooper says, is why the next one might be the most meaningful.

"What was special about Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters in '86? He kept grinding and then he did it," Cooper says. "How about Tiger (Woods) when he won the Masters in '19? Our window is open. But it's not as open as it was four, five years ago. At some point, guys are going to get older. (Andre Vasilevskiy) is going to get older. (Nikita Kucherov) is going to get older. (Brayden Point) is going to get older. Stamkos.

"But to win, get knocked down and come back, would be super cool. To be able to knock back at people that said, 'They were Chicago, they were Pittsburgh, L.A.' — the teams that dominated, won their Cups and had to take steps back because of the salary cap — if we can fight through that, it'd be really gratifying."

With the Lightning coming off back-to-back first-round playoff exits, many see them headed to the same purgatory as the other recent multiple-Cup winners: the Pittsburgh Penguins, Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings. They're too good to rebuild, not good enough to compete for a championship.

Cooper sees this group differently.

He calls last year's first-round loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs an aberration, feeling the Lightning played better in that series than they had the year before when they beat the Leafs in seven games en route to their third straight trip to the Cup Final. This year, the Lightning ran into the defending Eastern Conference champion Panthers, a Cup favorite, and lost in five games.

"They're a legit team," Cooper says. "I highly doubt there's anyone out there that's surprised we didn't beat them."

The Panthers won two one-goal games, including Game 2 in overtime, boasting shutdown defense with a lead reminiscent of Tampa Bay's Cup teams.

"One hundred percent," Cooper says. "And it sucks."

Do these losses hurt as much as before the Lightning reached the mountaintop?

"Is the sting a little bit less, knowing you already got your name on the Stanley Cup?" Cooper says. "In the moment, no. Because you're so caught up in the moment that nothing else matters. 2020, 2021, it's like they didn't even happen because you're in that moment. Stanley Cups are when you retire. When you look back, 'How many did I get?' That's what it is. But you're in the absolute moment, it's like, 'Now what do you do?'

"I look at it as another year off the calendar. We didn't win. So now we've got to wait another full year to get a crack. And I'm a year older. All the guys are a year older. The one thing is you never know when you're getting back. You never know. And the odds of you getting back, even if you're the best team, are 10 percent. It's everything against you. It's why everything has to go right."

Jon Cooper knows moments like this take everything going right. (Mike Carlson / Getty Images)

This year, that certainly didn't happen for the Lightning. They didn't have Mikhail Sergachev until Game 4, with the top-four defenseman returning from a broken leg. Vasilevskiy, arguably the best big-game goalie of his generation, hasn't been the best goalie in the series in the two first-round losses and admittedly struggled with inconsistency throughout this season after missing two months due to offseason back surgery. The Lightning had two goals overturned in the Panthers' series-clinching Game 5 due to goaltender interference calls. That sparked Cooper to make a "skirts" comment, which he then said "pained (him) more than the actual series loss."

But the championship core still believes it has a lot of good hockey left. Vasilevskiy is 29, Kucherov 30, Point 28, Cirelli 26, Sergachev 25. General manager Julien BriseBois said he hopes to re-sign captain Steven Stamkos, 34, and Victor Hedman, 33, and the two franchise cornerstones played some of their best hockey down the stretch this season. They had to carry a bigger load on the ice and in the room after so many salary-cap-sparked departures, from Ryan McDonagh to Alex Killorn to Ondrej Palat, etc. The Lightning are not nearly as deep, or as young.

They're not done, though, Cooper says.

"We're closer to where we were before than the other way," he says. "We're still a good team. But everyone else is trying to find a way to get good as well. There's 31 teams that are coming after you.

"I think our standard and how we've gone about our business in this league is still exceptional. What we've done is created our own monster because we created a reputation and expectation for a decade that's been of excellence. It's still excellent. It's just that we haven't won a championship in the last couple years and we've been knocked out in the first round. People think, 'What happened?' We're still knocking at the door. But the last couple years have been tough."

This brings us to Cooper, 56, the head of the "monster." He's the longest-tenured coach in the league, having just wrapped up his 11th full season in Tampa Bay; Mike Sullivan with the Penguins is next, two years behind. As the team's personnel and personality change, so does Cooper. He wears losses less than before, delegates more and prides himself on reading the room.

It's why he has yet to lose it.

"He just knows when to push and knows when to back off," Stamkos says. "He has the respect for each player. But he lets the team a lot of the time dictate how things are going to go. He's got such a good pulse on that. There's times when we need a kick in the butt. But he's not a yeller or screamer. He's calculated.

"You can see the mutual respect and maturity as a coach and a player, as a captain and a leader, to come together as we've gotten older. You learn what things work and which things don't. He just has an overall read of exactly what needs to be said and done at the right time. That's why I don't think it gets old."

Cooper admits he had to push more in the first two-thirds of this season, with the Lightning dangling outside of a playoff spot. Tampa Bay had seven different rookies make their NHL debuts this season. Half the team, from Tyler Motte to Luke Glendening to Tanner Jeannot to deadline additions Anthony Duclair and Matt Dumba, he was still trying to get to know.

"He sees that we have a different team, so he approaches it differently," Sergachev says. "Obviously he learns from his mistakes. It's crazy, like, he's not stubborn at all. Usually, people at that age are very stubborn. He's very mature. I think he's still evolving as a coach, which is fun to see and fun to watch."

Cooper is under contract through the 2025-26 season. His synergy and relationship with BriseBois is unique, going back 14 years to their championship run with AHL Norfolk. He's got one of the best owners in sports in Jeff Vinik. A father of three, Cooper has put down roots in Tampa. He calls the franchise a family.

Could he be a Lightning lifer?

"If there's ever a time when the band breaks up, we'll all have got in a room and say, 'OK, it's time for the band to break up,'" Cooper says. "I don't think it's a situation where you wake up one day and someone is gone. It's not the way it's run here. This is a special organization. Because this is hard to do in pro sports. It's hard to have the best record in the league and get swept in the playoffs (as the Lightning did in 2019) and bite your tongue and keep the group together. That's what makes this thing work, because of the trust. We're all in this together."

Cooper says there's no finger-pointing — "this organization looks for solutions, not excuses." And BriseBois lauds Cooper's leadership skills, emotional intelligence and ability to never get too high or too low.

"That allows him to weather the storms because there are storms," BriseBois says. "This is a tough league. It's a cutthroat business."

Jon Cooper and Julien Brisebois have a long-standing and successful partnership. (Ron Chenoy / USA Today)

There have been 17 coaching changes in the NHL since the end of last season. That's more than half the league. You can imagine any one of those teams would have had Cooper on speed dial if he were available. He's the kind of guy you fire your coach to make room for. A guy you tell to name his price.

Would Cooper ever consider coaching another team?

"If I was jobless and still had the fire to coach, then sure, somewhere else," he says. "But that hasn't even crossed my mind."

It doesn't appear he'll have to think about that, at least for the next couple of years.

"If there's a time, I think we're going to know," Cooper says. "Eventually, one day we're going to know it's time to pass the reins on to someone else. That is by no means now. But eventually, it has to happen. We can't do it forever.

"That will be a tough day. That will be a really, really tough day. But hopefully, that's not for a long time."

As he says this from behind his desk in his Amalie Arena office, he looks at the wall to his right, where there are two huge photos of the last two Cups. The first is of players jumping off the bench in the Edmonton bubble to celebrate in 2020. The second is of Cooper getting hugged by staff on the bench in 2021, smiling and raising two fingers.

Winning is addictive. It always has been for Cooper.

"Part of the joy in the whole process is finding out what's going to work," he says. "There are some key components here that are still worthy. They're a championship-caliber team. We just need to find little bits of pieces of the puzzle to put around them."

There's room in the case in the hallway for more trophies. Even in Cooper's office, which is full of photos and signed jerseys. Where would he put the next championship photo? Cooper looks to his left to the only empty spot, covered by a Lightning logo.

"There," he says. "That'd be perfect."

(Photo of Jon Cooper on the Lightning bench: Joel Auerbach / Getty Images)