TAMPA, Florida – Getting ready for Game One tonight, Lightning Coach Jon Cooper took some time answer questions after his club’s morning skate before the start of the Stanley Cup Final.
Match-ups are a big responsibility, particularly the deeper a team continues in the playoffs. When asked if the matchups change at all when Chicago has Toews and Kane together, Coach Cooper responded,
“It’s hard to say. We haven’t played them yet. Last time we played them was in February. Joel changes lines quite a bit, as well. We’ll just have to see how things go, how things start. I can’t predict what he’s going to do. I’m fairly certain the lineup he starts with won’t be the lineup he finishes with. He’ll move things around. Especially teams that haven’t played teams that often, Eastern Conference, Western Conference, you play each other twice a year. I don’t think they get fired up to play the Tampa Bay Lightning the way they get fired up to play the St. Louis Blues in the regular season. It’s different now. We’ll have to see how it plays out tonight. We’ll get a feel for each other tonight when it starts.”
During media day, Victor Hedman was asked about how he prepares the night before the games and how he doesn’t sleep at all. Coach Cooper was asked how his night was and said,
“We talked about that. He jumps right into video games. No, it was good. Same thing I’ve done every night before a game. But it’s hard to explain because we’ve been going through this process for a month and a half now. Just to look at this room at each round, has grown, it’s been pretty cool. We’re also getting used to it, having everybody around here. I’m human, so you get excited, nervous, whatever the energy is you have before a series. But when the playoffs open, it’s new, it’s fresh, the playoffs are here, everybody is going. You get as far as we are now, it’s unbelievably exciting to be a part of, especially going through what we did yesterday, it was a pretty cool experience. We’re used to this now a little bit. So you’ve got into routines of what you’re supposed to do the nights before, what we’re supposed to do. Of course, you lean on the things you did the night before you won games as opposed to when you lose. I can’t reveal everything I do.”
The effort and result in Game 5 and Game 7 in New York was discussed and if there was any sort of winning combination or formula. He was made aware of how his players are talking about the same type of style of hockey playing here at home, trying to ‘entertain the crowd’ type of hockey. He was asked if they need to have a mentality like they had in Game 5 and Game 7 to make that happen.
Cooper responded with, “It’s hard to explain because we won 32 games at home. We got a little bit maligned for being the team entering the playoffs with the worst road record. As it turns out, if it wasn’t for our road play, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I think with our team, I don’t know if we take more of a workmanlike approach to these road games. We understand zero-zero is fine for us, even when we’re in the third. We’ll take the chances with our group. You give us a scoring chance, we have a pretty good chance of putting it in the back of the net. But I think sometimes at home, especially against the Rangers, we fell behind early. We just tried to chase the game. Do we get caught up in our atmosphere, the crowd, everything that’s going on? We might. We’ve been a pretty, I don’t know, free-wheeling group per se when we’ve been at home. We’ve had a lot of success. When you’re not scoring as much as you’d like, or you’re giving up as many as we were, it gets frustrating, then we press too much. I think our road game has been much more patient. If we’re going to have success, we’re going to have to do us, or Chicago will light us up.”
When asked what having seven defensemen does in terms of matchup abilities he is able to make and also not worrying about what you have on the road, Cooper responded, “Well, I mean, there’s a ton of things that go into this. Whether it be matchups, getting some of your best players out there, more of your forward group guys. Penalties come into play. The other night when Coburn was sick. There’s so many things, it becomes much more of an issue when you lose a defenseman than a forward. For us, we just get to move guys around a little bit more. We give you different looks. Some of the defensemen we’ve played, six or seven defensemen, they’ve given us really good minutes as opposed to maybe what the 12 forwards would give. It’s just a different look. We’ve been comfortable with it. I’ve been comfortable with it in my coaching career. It doesn’t always work, but it’s having a pretty good run here in the playoffs.”
Cooper was asked more about the Kane and Toews match-up, if they do play together, is it a different pairing than his club has faced in the post-season. Cooper said, “Well, that’s a pretty exceptional group, those two guys. But matchup-wise it’s not always what forward group you have against them, it’s your D pair. I look back at some of these series we’ve played with Brassard’s line and Stepan’s line. Those were two very solid lines. We felt we had three lines we could play against them. You look at the Montréal series, Pacioretty was on the ice. We felt we had a couple lines that could play against them. Detroit the same thing, Zetterberg and Datsyuk. Every team has good players. You have to challenge yourself to be better. We’re sitting here in the Stanley Cup Final. I’ve taken on, as well as our team has taken on, sometimes we got to be best on best. You’re not going to pull a rabbit out of your hat and say we have some magic scheme. Just be better than the next guy. That’s what you have to do. You have to challenge yourself. And Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane are two of the best players this league has seen in a long time. But we feel Steven Stamkos, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat, we go down our list and think, maybe we’re not too bad ourselves. Let’s prove to everybody you can play against these guys. In saying that, they’ll probably see a high dose of Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman”
Getting to the spirit of winning the Stanley Cup, Cooper was asked about the first time he thought about winning the Stanley Cup and Cooper responded, “Oh, gosh. Those are ones you have to give me beforehand. I think my parents still have the dryer downstairs where I used to shoot the puck, the dryers that open up. I think my mom still has that dryer, 40 plus years later. That’s where it all started, was in that little basement in Prince George.”
More great stuff to come.
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Game 1 is set for Wednesday night at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida. Face-off is set for 8:00 PM ET and is being televised on NBC, CBC, TVA Sports. The schedule for the remaining games in the Stanley Cup Final are listed below.
Game 2 Sat., June 6th at 7:15 p.m. Chicago at Tampa Bay NBC, CBC, TVA Sports
Game 3 Mon., June 8th at 8 p.m. Tampa Bay at Chicago NBCSN, CBC, TVA Sports
Game 4 Wed., June 10th at 8 p.m. Tampa Bay at Chicago NBCSN, CBC, TVA Sports
*Game 5 Sat., June 13th at 8 p.m. Chicago at Tampa Bay NBC, CBC, TVA Sports
*Game 6 Mon., June 15th at 8 p.m. Tampa Bay at Chicago NBC, CBC, TVA Sports
*Game 7 Wed., June 17th at 8 p.m. Chicago at Tampa Bay NBC, CBC, TVA Sports
* if necessary
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