Three of the four surviving teams in the 2015 NHL playoffs have veteran coaches. The Tampa Bay Lightning have Jon Cooper, who is handling his team beautifully in his second full season as an NHL coach.
It’s particularly remarkable given the experience gap between the sophomore coach and his distinguished rivals.
When Cooper got into coaching for the first time, doing part-time work running a team for a Catholic high school in 1998-99, his current rivals were already well-established:
New York’s Alain Vigneault had spent a decade as an NHL assistant and QMJHL head coach and was in his second year with the Montreal Canadiens.
Joel Quenneville was a year away from winning the Jack Adams Award with St. Louis.
Even Bruce Boudreau had spent nearly a decade behind the bench. He’d win an ECHL championship (Kelly Cup) the same year that Cooper was getting his feet wet.
Cooper told NHL.com’s Dan Rosen in April that he didn’t get into coaching with NHL ambitions. He did it because he loved doing it. That’s not at all surprising given where he started out. It’s hard to ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Jon Cooper Showing Remarkable Learning Curve with Lightning on Cusp of Cup Final
May 25th, 2015 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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