‘TWEAKS’ TAKE EFFECT AS LIGHTNING HEAT UP
Cooper adds grit, new focus on defence to an already explosive offensive lineup
Jon Cooper isn’t a copycat.
But, yeah, he was watching the Stanley Cup final last year, and he noticed what everyone else saw when St. Louis defeated Boston in a seven-game series that at times looked more like a 12-round title fight.
Another year, another final featuring two scale-tipping teams that played hard, heavy and defensive hockey.
Where have we seen this before?
For a coach whose team was built around speed and skill and being able to score goals in bunches, it wasn’t exactly an eye-opener. But it did cause some navel gazing.
If the Lightning were to take that next step, would they have to get bigger? Would they have to play heavier? Would they — gulp! — have to sacrifice offence in the pursuit of keeping the puck out of the net?
The answers didn’t come easily.
“Those are tough questions,”
Cooper, whose team has the fourth-best record in the NHL after struggling out of the gate, said in a phone interview last week. “It’s really hard to completely change your team in one year. We have a recipe we like with our group. We didn’t want to change that. We felt it wasn’t that the identity of team had the change, but the responsibility of the players.”
In other words, the Lightning team you see today isn’t much different than the one that won the Presidents’ Trophy last year. Nikita Kucherov might not win the Art Ross Trophy again, but he’s on pace for 98 points. Steven Stamkos is a top-20 scorer, while Brayden Point and Victor Hedman are among the top 45.
As a team, Tampa Bay is averaging the fourth-most goals in the league.
And yet, there’s a lot that Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe and general manager Kyle Dubas can learn from some of the so-called “tweaks” that Tampa Bay has made since being humbled in a four-game, first-round sweep in last year’s playoffs.
They’re taking fewer penalties. They’re giving up fewer shots and allowing fewer goals. They have a player ranked 14th in the league in hits, and four others, including Cup champion Patrick Maroon, who are 220 pounds or heavier. They’re skilled, but they aren’t pushovers.
“We had to grow as a team,” said Cooper. “We had to change our game a little bit. It wasn’t an overhaul. But there were tweaks. We had been used to playing a certain way for some time. And when you win 62 games, you get used to winning and playing that way. You can’t get rid of it overnight.”
It hasn’t happened overnight, but in the past several months, the Lightning are back to being the most feared team in the
NHL. In some ways, they’re even scarier.
Tampa Bay still wants to win with speed and skill and creativity. But that’s just part of what makes them successful. Offence only gets you so far. To go all the way, you need more than just speed and skill. You need to sacrifice.
Cooper realized that a long time ago. And after the players were embarrassed in four consecutive playoff losses to the Blue Jackets, the rest of the team did, as well.
“Unfortunately, after we went through what we went through in the playoffs, you now have a basis for showing what we need to change,” said Cooper. “When you win 62, there’s a formula that is working. But you can’t score your way out of trouble. That’s not the recipe. It can only work for so long.
“You’ve got a lot of offensively gifted players. That’s the reason they’ve become stars in the league, because they can score. And scoring goals is fun. But if you enjoy winning, you’ll (play defence).”
Of course, it’s not that easy. It never is. You tell players to start paying more attention to the defensive side — to not fly the coop in pursuit of a goal — and the entire flow of the game changes. One tweak can have a butterfly effect. So it took time for Tampa Bay to learn how to score without being scored on, to play defensive but not conservative. A lot of time.
“There’s definitely no question we had our mental struggles,” said Cooper.
“We struggled against the good teams in the league. We were so used to winning that we forgot how hard it is to win. Everyone was saying, ‘What happened?’ But we were trying to get better as a team.”
In October, Tampa Bay went 6-4-2. After the first two months, the Lightning’s record was 12-9-3. They were a playoff team, but just barely. They certainly weren’t the team that had started last season with just seven regulation losses in their first 41 games.
But by the end of December, things started to come around. The Lightning went on a 10-game winning streak that stretched into January. But it wasn’t the wins that Cooper liked. It was how they were winning.
They beat Florida 6-1. They blew out Vancouver 9-2. And they went into Winnipeg and embarrassed the Jets 7-1.
“You know what the key is?” asked Cooper. “Yeah, we scored seven, but we only gave up one goal. A 7-1 win is way different than 7-6. Earlier on, it was 7-6.”