As is the case for nearly every home game at AMALIE Arena, fans are almost certain to howl “Cooooooooooop” after the public address announcer introduces Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper ahead of Wednesday’s game against the Washington Capitals.
Those fans might be louder than usual this week when they applaud the man calling the shots for the Bolts, and for good reason.
Wednesday marks Cooper’s 900th game—all with the Lightning—as an NHL head coach. His 536 wins in 899 career games already give Cooper the second-most victories of any NHL coach in their first 900 games behind the bench.
Only Hockey Hall of Fame member Scotty Bowman, often considered the greatest NHL coach of all time, posted more wins (548) through their first 900 games.
Bowman, who was in attendance at AMALIE Arena for Tampa Bay’s 8-2 victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Monday and whose 1,244 career wins are the most in league history, said Cooper’s success has not been by accident.
Bowman mentioned how Cooper worked his way through the coaching ranks, comparing it to his own journey of spending 10 years in amateur hockey before reaching the NHL. Bowman said that background and experience has helped Cooper.
"He doesn't get flustered at all, and he's got a lot of good background,” Bowman said of the Lightning coach. “He builds good teams.”
Building those teams dates back to before Cooper’s days in the NHL. He won a pair of Robertson Cup championships in the North American Hockey League (NAHL) from 2003 to 2008. He moved up to coach in the United States Hockey League, posting an 84-27-9 record across two seasons and winning the USHL Clark Cup and Coach of the Year award in 2010.
He was hired by the Tampa Bay Lightning after that run to coach their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate at the time, the Norfolk Admirals.
Cooper’s Admirals set the AHL ablaze by winning 28 consecutive games in the 2011-12 season on their path to winning the Calder Cup championship.
Cooper kept the job when the Lightning AHL team became the Syracuse Crunch in the 2012-13 season before being promoted to the Lightning head job in 2013 with 17 games left in that NHL season.
Cooper has helped the Lightning to four Stanley Cup Finals, won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021 and has qualified for the playoffs in 10 of his 11 full seasons. He is 20 wins away from tying Marc Crawford (556) for the 25th-most by an NHL head coach all-time.
Bowman said Cooper is “for sure” one of the best coaches the NHL has ever seen.
Cooper holds a 536-286-77 record going into Wednesday. He is the longest-tenured coach currently in the NHL.
Bowman said he and Cooper are friends, and the retired coach continued to speak on similarities between the two earlier this week.
In some ways, Bowman called Cooper’s success more impressive than his own. Bowman pointed to Cooper having to navigate a salary cap, something he never had to worry about when he coached.
He applauded the Lightning’s “continuity” of success and gave Cooper and management credit for developing later draft picks, smart roster moves as well as maturing young talent into a roster which grew into consistent Stanley Cup contention and two championships.
"The fact that he's won all those games and has done it with a lot of different types of players, that's something. I have a lot of admiration for him because of what he's done,” Bowman said. “They bring in players, they lose players, and he just tramps on. I think he's really smart in that way. He doesn't look back, he looks ahead.”
As for looking ahead, Bowman thinks there is still plenty for Cooper—a coach he described as “multi-faceted”— and the franchise to look forward to.
“Tampa found him and he found Tampa, and I think he's gonna coach as long as he can."
