The Lightning Need To Fire Jon Cooper
This post game press conference drove me absolutely insane and I don’t give one single fuck about the Lightning. All calm and stoic. He’s not mad, he’s disappointed, but gee whiz, you know you have to remember that half of the teams in the league are out and everyone in the playoffs is good. DUDE WHAT!?! How about an OUNCE of emotion. You just took the best team in the league, and one of the best regular season teams of all time and absolutely got your doors blown off. Swept. Nothing. It’s a MASSIVE failure and immediately after the game is NOT the time to go to rationalization. Even your fucking twitter account understands that
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Sure, that reads like a weird break-up text from the girl you’ve been dating long distance after college, but at least there’s some emotion and some accountability there. Every Jon Cooper quote sounds like he’s talking about some throw away game up in Rochester. Even after Game 2 when they lost he said fire alarms were going off
Yeah, fire alarms were going off. Jon Cooper was that stuffy guidance counciler calmly saying “single-file, everyone. Single file” as you walked out of the doors during a fire drill. Except…it wasn’t a drill. It was a fucking fire for real. There never seems to be any sense of urgency and then when it’s over and you get swept and lose game 4 7-3 all he wants to talk about is how much character the team showed by fighting back to tie it after being down early. What the fuck man. The ONLY time he showed any sort of passion during the entire series or maybe his entire 6 year tenure with the Lightning was when he won that challenge last night
But even that felt awkward and forced. Or ill-timed. Great challenge. Succesful challenge. Definitely turned the feel of the game for a minute, but Cooper on the bench reminded me of Howard Dean in 2004
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2004…the last time the Lightning won the Stanley Cup. And they won it with…John Tortarella behind the bench who legitimately seemed to turn game one and the series on it’s head with a speech to his team between periods when they were getting smoked out of the gates
And look, I know how this goes. If the Lightning had won the Cup with Cooper then he’s the cerebral genius who never lets his team get too high or too low. But you know what…I’ve always kind of hated that type of an approach. And I’ve never really liked the vibes from Cooper
It’s just not my style. You need a coach who can inspire and challenge players at times and it doesn’t feel like that is a strength for Cooper. When you’ve got the best roster in the league and you’re CRUISING through the regular season I am sure there’s nobody better in the NHL that Cooper. He just doesn’t seem like the guy you want to turn to in a crisis. I think 6 years is enough of an experiment. I understand that this is a bit reactionary and a bit of a meatball take, but I think the Lightning need to consider finding a replacement. Even Cooper cited the Capitals last night. A team that won Presidents Trophies and it took that group forever to get over the hump. Well it also took them 5 different head coaches in the Ovi era before they finally got Barry Trotz. It’s time for Tampa Bay to do the same.