All-Star Game diary: Jon Cooper

Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper coached the Atlantic Division in the 2018 Honda NHL All-Star Game at Amalie Arena on Sunday, and kept a diary of his experiences throughout All-Star Weekend. In his final entry, Cooper talks about how blown away he was by the weekend in Tampa.

TAMPA --This whole event exceeded my expectations.
What's amazing is you walk around and you have a smile on your face the entire time. You don't know who you're going to run into, who you're going to meet, from the coaches to the players to the trainers to the Hall of Famers.
I did an event, turned around, walked a bit, had somebody grab my arm and he said, "Hey, it was a pleasure to meet you."
It was Bryan Trottier.
Bryan. Trottier.
I was in awe. I was like, "Oh my God, you know who I am? I watched you win Cup after Cup after Cup."
I did another event, spun around, and Bernie Parent was there.
I'm just thinking, "Oh my God, that's Bernie Parent."
You're just in awe of the history of hockey that you're meeting here and the fact that they know who I am is the weirdest part. It's still hard to accept that. It was just really cool.
Here's the thing, who knows if you ever get to do this again? Who knows if you're going to make an All-Star Game again, let alone one you're hosting? It's incredibly special, and then to see some of the stuff these guys did, especially what our guy, Nikita Kucherov, did in the first game, amazing.

So, we knew he had two goals and there was a little bit of talk about if he gets the third we were going to urge the players to toss their helmets on the ice, a little tip of the cap, if you will. It just seemed like the right thing to do, especially after that [third] goal he scored.
A hat trick is one thing, but that goal will be seen forever. That goal deserved a helmet toss. It's incredible.
If there was one drawback it was losing in the final to the Pacific Division and that darn Gerard Gallant, I tell you.
Gerard and I met at the World Cup in 2016. He's the first guy I called to go to the World Championships last year. Well, the guy must have stolen all my secrets because now I'm 0-2 against him in the regular season this year and I'm 0-1 against him in the All-Star Game.
So, that's it Gerard, enough of this. Hopefully I see you in June to repay this. Let's do it.
We have a ways to go before we can even start thinking about that, though. I'm going to soak up a few more hours of this, but we're back to business Monday. It's almost too bad that Monday couldn't be a soak-it-all-in day because it's a whirlwind. It reminded me a lot of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the deeper you went, that kind of media coverage, attention, family around.
For me, though, it's time to go back to work. What happens is the All-Star Game ends and you reset. Now you're back at it, so where are we in the standings, how far are we from clinching a playoff spot, are you looking up or down at teams, and teams dig in now.
These are the hard days. It's this little month here where you just can't let things slip because everything gets amped up. We've got to be ready for it and we've had a lot of guys who have played some relaxed hockey here over the past couple of days.
It's time to turn it back into game time.