Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper loves to use the media against his opponent. Versus the Toronto Maple Leafs, though, the cracks are starting to show, writes Mike Stephens.
TORONTO – You could hear Jon Cooper laughing from all the way down the hall in Scotiabank Arena on Thursday morning a good thirty seconds before he eventually stepped to the podium for his pre-game media availability .
Hours before a critical road playoff matchup against a divisional opponent, Cooper projected as a man without a care. The 55-year-old cracked jokes to all who would listen, made a show of rearranging reporters' phones laid out in front of him on the podium table, and took his typical long, wistful pauses before answering most questions.
It was nothing new, really. Performance or not, this is who Jon Cooper is.
Let's just say that Cooper loves himself a press conference. Long after the final buzzer has sounded, Cooper operates as if the airwaves upon which his words travel as an extension of the playing surface, with every statement placed strategically into the post- or pre-game conversation to serve a purpose.
Such things can be expected of the coach who cut his teeth as a public defense attorney in Lansing, Mich. in the mid-1990s, spending his early 30s negotiating with prosecutors who, according to a former District Court Judge and teammate of Cooper's on their all-lawyer hockey team "The Legal Eagles", "would give away the store to him."
But this is pro hockey, of course, and the stakes are markedly lower on a patch of ice than a courtroom. Cooper seems to relish that fact, having fun with his ability to influence at least some aspect of things from beyond his spot on the bench.
His script may have become predictable – to those who follow it closely, at least – but it still seems to work.
After a loss, it's always the Lightning who handed the game away, allowing their opponent to succeed out of the goodness of their own hearts. A win, on the other hand, is a testament to the team they just beat, who really deserve a pat on the back for putting up such a fight and might even win the next one! Rinse and repeat. And you can't argue with results, either. This script has helped make Cooper the longest-tenured coach in the NHL at the moment and won him two Stanley Cups.
Both sides of the Cooper coin were evident in the first 24 hours of the Lightning-Leafs series that kicked off in Toronto.
The morning ahead of Game 1, Cooper spun near-romantically about how gosh-darn good the Maple Leafs were the last time they faced off in the post-season and how the version his club was about to tackle is even better. He raved about the respect he had for the core in Toronto, and how, in the handshake line following their triumph over them in Game 7 last year, he told Sheldon Keefe "not to change anything" because the Leafs were this close to beating them. This close to getting over the hump.
One reporter asked if the series felt different this year. Cooper, with his chin resting in his hand, looked off in an almost wistful fashion before answering, "Hmmm. I don't think it does."
After the Lightning then embarrassed the Maple Leafs in their own building on Tuesday night by a score of 7-3 to grab control of the series early on, Cooper kept to his playbook, offering words of encouragement to his opponent in lieu of a victory speech.
"The Leafs might win the series," he said.
"They might. There’s so much runway left in this, but what I’ve learned over the years is I sure as hell wouldn’t bet against our guys.”
The tone is almost patronizing, as if Cooper's Lightning are the big brother offering their less-developed sibling some badly needed wisdom.
Then Game 2 happened.
The Lightning came apart at the seams on Thursday, surrendering seven goals to the Maple Leafs in a blowout loss that saw three of their players get ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct – two of whom had words to say to opposing fans from the penalty box.
Andrei Vasilevskiy looked shell-shocked. Ian Cole grabbed the puck mid-play and chucked it behind him like a shot put. Corey Perry may have stopped Patrick Maroon from hitting a fan with a stick from the penalty box. Things did not go well.
Stepping to the podium following the loss, Cooper had an uncharacteristic stoicism about him. His body language was rigid. His words terse and to the point.
"It's a seven-game series, it's not a one-game one-and-done," he remarked to the sea of reporters before him.
"We'll be alright."
Asked about countering Toronto's vaunted center depth, though, and Cooper went off-book entirely.
"So, how many centers deep are we?" he countered.
"Give me Point, Cirelli and Paul all day. Against anybody in the league."
No patronizing platitudes or "it could go either way" hedging. Instead, a fierce defense of his own roster and a bold declaration that, in Cooper's mind, his players are better than the ones on the other side of the ice.
That does not often happen with Jon Cooper. It's a rare descent into sincerity from a coach who has spent the past decade dipping each word into a vat of borderline sarcasm. And it showed something that has almost never been seen from the veteran bench boss over the Lightning's recent three-year reign: vulnerability.
At least until the final horn sounds on Game 3, Cooper does not control the narrative. Not anymore. It's unchartered territory for him and his club. And, in stark contrast to the norm, the Maple Leafs managed to exit a Cooper press conference with their hands on the wheel.