John Cooper’s postgame comments put several players on notice
Jon Cooper didn't dance around it Monday night after the Tampa Bay Lightning dropped Game 1 to the Montreal Canadiens. He aimed the blame directly at his own room.
The head coach called four offensive-zone penalties from his group, quote, stupidity, and said the loss was on Tampa.
That's a pretty direct read from a Stanley Cup winning coach.
Cooper told reporters the penalty parade wasn't over-aggression. It was carelessness. Four trips to the box in the attacking zone is a gift you can't hand any playoff team, and you absolutely cannot hand it to this one.
Montreal runs one of the deadliest top units in the league. You don't want to find out why in April.
Martin St-Louis leaning on a Canadiens power play Tampa just fed for 20 minutes
Nick Suzuki finished the regular season with 101 points, including 11 power-play goals and 32 power-play assists. Cole Caufield added 51 goals, 11 of them on the man advantage.
Lane Hutson sits behind them with 78 points and a plus-36 rating. That's the trigger shooter, the finisher, and the quarterback all on one Montreal power-play unit.
Tampa's four offensive zone minors were not calibrated for that lineup.
Here is the full Cooper quote if you want to hear the frustration land in his voice.
This isn't a coach deflecting. Cooper's been doing this long enough to know when to take the hit for his team, and this was one of those nights.
Four offensive zone penalties against a club that lives on the power play is coaching malpractice if he doesn't call it out.
But Tampa also went to the power play and scored. It wasn't a one-sided special teams night in the matchup.
Both coaches will be flipping through video hunting adjustments before Game 2 on Tuesday.
Nikita Kucherov finished the regular season with 130 points. Brandon Hagel posted 36 goals. Tampa's top end was built to outscore adversity.
The problem is they weren't the only ones outscoring adversity in Game 1.
Montreal's plus-27 differential is real, and Suzuki's 82-game point-a-game run tracks with exactly the type of April performance St-Louis wanted from him.
Cooper's challenge for Game 2 is simple. Stay out of the box in the attacking zone. If Tampa can do that, the top six will handle the rest.
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