Tampa Bay Lightning wins the Stanley Cup in the pandemic bubble

In the NHL parity era, where breed franchises belong to a bygone era, Tampa Bay has been one of the most successful teams in the league since Cooper took charge behind the bench near the end of the 2012-13 season.

For five of those years, from 2013 to 2018, Cooper helped Rick Bowness, a veteran defensive coach who left for Dallas at the start of the 2018-19 season. He has been appointed interim coach for the Stars midway through the season, following Jim Montgomery’s dismissal.

Bowness was also in the 2011 Finals with Vancouver and the 2015 Tampa team.

“Three kicks in that – the past nine years – it’s disappointing,” he said. “Sitting here as a coach, you have to cope with the punches. We are not ruling out anyone’s effort or commitment. We faced a short team. We lost to a better team.”

Currently Cuper is the longest-running coach in the league. Under his leadership, the club has now had qualifiers in six of its seven full seasons, reached the Eastern Conference Finals twice and lost to Chicago in the 2015 Stanley Cup Finals before finally finishing the job this year – the Sunbelt team achieved their championship. Dreams in an empty square in northern Alberta.

“It’s easy to talk about it now,” said Cooper. “Bottom line, there are some talented people that I think success finds right away. But in team sports, I really believe failure – you have to feel it before you can achieve success.

“You wear bumps, you wear bruises, you wear heartache,” he continued. “You wear emotions, you wear them on your sleeve and they keep you awake at night, but they also push you in. It almost becomes – fear of losing is greater than the joy of winning, and we will not be denied.

“Our players will not be deprived. We should get up here and talk and own what happened last year, but the players took it on a chin, and I couldn’t be happier for these guys because they deserve it.”