Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper has two Stanley Cup rings and he’s reached the 900-game plateau — one of only eight in history to do so with the same team — but when he talks about being the bench boss of Canada’s 4 Nations team next February he talks like a kid who’s wandered into a chocolate factory.
Cooper, who was the assistant coach to Todd McLellan on another starry side, the under 23 Canada-U.S. team at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, will have three of his own players — Brayden Point, Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli — for comfort food sake on this Canadian 4 Nations team, but he’ll also have the two megawatt Canadian centres, Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon, as well as forward Mitch Marner and star defenceman Cale Makar, and, well… the list goes on and on.
That 2016 fast-skating, run-and-gun-with-fun team was so good that the 50-goal scorer Point, one of the first six players named to the 4 Nations squad and Marner, the top passing winger in hockey, couldn’t make it.
‘Pretty cool’
“That’s when all these kids were brand new… Auston Matthews was on that team (along with McDavid and MacKinnon) and we didn’t know anything about him because he was playing in Europe,” said Cooper.
“That was an important experience for me. Fast forward to now, and all these players I was with then are the cream of the crop of this league and fortunately I’ll have to chance to coach them in February.
“To watch them grow and coach them in their primes, pretty cool.”
Cooper got his fill of McDavid’s wow factor then as a teenager, and now his job won’t be trying to find ways to check him as an opposing coach, his job will be finding the right wingers for McDavid, and who knows, he might even ask Connor for his two cents worth.
“Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see him (McDavid) while I’m here,” said Cooper.
“But I’m spoken to him quite often throughout the process after he was named (in the original six) and what an impressive kid.
“And I’m not talking the hockey part, he’s really insightful, gives you honest answers and I really appreciate that about him. Not so much tomorrow (Oilers vs Lightning), but I’m really looking forward to being behind the bench (4 Nations).”
So who does Connor want to play with in February?
“Uh, those conversations are coming up,” laughed Cooper.
Two Cup rings
Cooper has two Stanley Cups and got the Lightning to a third so clearly he is very good at what he does. As we said, he’s coached 904 games with one team (11 full seasons and parts of two others, with the second most NHL wins, 536, by the 900-game mark), and he’s changed with the times.
“When I first got the job I ran everything myself, probably to a fault. When you’re coming (minors) you might have one assistant coach and you come to this league and you’re back in your old habits,” said Cooper.
“When I really started to have success, I let the really smart people, the assistant coaches do their jobs and that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned.
“There’s players you need to put your arm around and those you need to kick in the butt. That’s what you have to identify.”
He won’t have to push or cajole any of his players in the 4 Nations.
What does a coach have to do with this bunch?
“Just don’t screw it up,” laughed Cooper.
“That’s honestly the case. You go into a tournament like this and it’s three games (round-robin) and you hope to play a fourth. At best you have two practices beforehand, and you try to put the players in the best positions to succeed. A little bit will be trial and error the first few periods, but these guys are the best of the best. You talk about players with hockey sense, and knowing what they’re doing… our job (coaches) is to simplify a game plan. Don’t make them overthink… just go and play.”
Point, one of the last guys off the ice after practice Monday here, didn’t make the 2016 squad because, as he says “I wasn’t good enough.” but he’s one of the elite NHLers now. Again he was one of the first six players named along with McDavid, MacKinnon, Makar, Brad Marchand and Sidney Crosby.
“I was surprised at that. I don’t put myself in that group,” downplayed Point, 28, who has 18 goals in the 21 games he’s played this year.
He could play third line centre on this Canadian team behind McDavid, MacKinnon or Sidney Crosby, with one of them moving to the wing. Or he might wind up on right-wing. He’s come a long, long way from being drafted in the third round in 2014 (Moose Jaw Warriors) because (a) he was skilled but small and (b) his skating needed work. Now, his skating is fantastic, with heavy doses of work years back with figure-skating coach Barb Underhill, who worked on Point’s skating edges.
“Let’s be honest part of it (becoming a star) is a gift,” said Cooper.
“I don’t know if any of those pucks that go in the net are over 45 miles an hour. He has an innate ability to place pucks in the net. Just goes to show when you’re in the right spot, the shot doesn’t have to blasted into the back of the net. He’s as gifted a scorer as I’ve seen in tight.
“He comes up in the big moments, five overtime goals, game-clinching goals in the playoffs, three Stanley Cup Finals and in one of our wins could have been the Conn Smythe winner,” said Cooper.
He’s got A level hockey sense, too.
“He knows where to be and that separates the good from the great,” said Cooper.
He had to work tirelessly on his foot-speed and balance, though.
“The one knock on him wasn’t whether he’d score but how was he going to get from A to B, and to watch him go from being an average skater the first time I saw him at development camp to an elite skater. That’s on the player,” said Cooper.
Hagel, who grew up in Morinville and played major junior in Red Deer, was a sixth-round draft pick of Buffalo, who didn’t sign him after two more years of junior. He wound up in Chicago and they made the mistake of their lives, sending one of their few, gamer-type players to Tampa for two first-round picks and two young players. A surprising trade that icon Jonathan Toews publicly decried because he loved the fire Hagel brought to the Hawks.
Now Hagel is Tampa’s answer to Oilers forward Zach Hyman. Big motors, both of them.
“Hagel and (Cirelli, who took a wallop into the boards in Vancouver Sunday and didn’t practise Monday) are dogs on bones, willing to sacrifice for the good of the team, all that good stuff,” said Point.
“Hagel’s a kid who’s earned it. I’m not sure he was on people’s radars a year ago but he went to the worlds and made a name for himself. He’s a Swiss army knife. He can play on the power play, he penalty kills. He’s got grit, he can check, he can score. Not a lot of guys have that. He’s got everything in his toolbox.”
Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don’t miss the news you need to know — add and to your bookmarks and .
You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: | .