It’s time to bring out the balloons and streamers as we all wish Tampa Bay Lightning Head Coach Jon Cooper a happy birthday.
Whether he is with the Metro Jets, Green Bay Gamblers, St. Louis Bandits, Norfolk Admirals, Syracuse Crunch and now Tampa Bay Lightning, Jon Cooper has been a winner everywhere he has been. What is even more outstanding is the impact that he has had on the players he has coached.
48 years ago today, Jon Cooper was born in Prince George, British Columbia. He grew up as a hockey player and played his high school hockey at Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. He later moved on to Hofstra University and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. He played lacrosse and club hockey for the school.
After graduation, Cooper started his coaching career with the Metro Jets of the Central States Hockey League. He led the team to the Silver Cup Championship before taking the head coaching position with the Green Bay Gamblers. He led the Gamblers of the USHL to the league championship and the team won the Clark Cup at the conclusion of the 2010 season.
The next year, the Tampa Bay Lightning hired Cooper to be the Head Coach of the team’s American Hockey League affiliate Norfolk Admirals. He helped the 2011-12 team become Calder Cup champions that season and Cooper was awarded with the Louis A. R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL’s best head coach.
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The team later moved to Syracuse and Cooper helped lead the Crunch to a Calder Cup Finals appearance. However, this time his team would fall short as the Grand Rapids Griffins would defeat the Crunch and take the championship. He would coach 65 more games with the Crunch the next season before he earned a promotion and became the Head Coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Cooper would earn the promotion as the team would fire then Head Coach Guy Boucher. Cooper would become the eighth head coach in team history. In 180 games coached with the team, Cooper has a record of 101-59-20 including a recent appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals. Though his team would fall short, Cooper has solidified himself as one of the top bench bosses in the league.
We here at Bolts By The Bay would like to wish Jon Cooper a very happy 48th birthday. We hope he had a great offseason and is all rested up, but soon he will once again lead his team through training camp, preseason action, the regular season, and hopefully long into the postseason as the team continues to look for its second Stanley Cup title.
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