The Lightning have signed head coach Jon Cooper to a one-year extension, The Fourth Interval’s David Pagnotta stories. He’ll stay in Tampa by means of the 2025-26 marketing campaign. He’d beforehand signed a three-year extension in October 2021 that ensured he’d be paid by the workforce by means of 2024-25. Talking to reporters at this morning’s end-of-season media availability, basic supervisor Julien BriseBois informed reporters the workforce wouldn’t maintain extension talks with Cooper this summer time as a result of “he had time period,” indicating he’d signed or agreed to signal an extension previous subsequent season (by way of the Tampa Bay Instances’ Eduardo A. Encina).
It was inarguably a down season for the workforce, marred by dropping quantity two defenseman Mikhail Sergachev for over half the season and beginning the marketing campaign with out All-Star goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. However the 56-year-old Cooper’s observe document does greater than sufficient heavy lifting to persuade the Lightning entrance workplace that he’s the fitting particular person to increase their dwindling championship window.
After he took over for Man Boucher with 15 video games remaining within the shortened 2012-13 season, the Lightning have solely missed the playoffs as soon as in Cooper’s tenure. The longest-serving coach within the league has compiled a 525-279-75 document in 879 regular-season video games behind the Tampa bench and an 87-63 document in an astounding 150 playoff appearances. His 612 complete wins with the Lightning are the third-most all-time with a single franchise, trailing Lindy Ruff with the Sabres (628) and Al Arbour with the Islanders (859).
Earlier than this season, the Lightning hadn’t gone multiple 12 months with no playoff collection victory since advancing to the 2015 Stanley Cup Last. Now, they’ve fallen in need of a .600 factors proportion in back-to-back years and are 3-8 of their 11 playoff video games over the past two seasons. Cooper’s sole job over the subsequent two is to maintain the membership from falling into the lure of post-dynasty mediocrity, very similar to the present version of the Penguins and the early 2010s Purple Wings.
The roster he leads subsequent season gained’t look significantly completely different. 16 roster gamers are signed for subsequent season at a mixed $75.1M cap hit, per CapFriendly. The notable exception is captain Steven Stamkos, who will develop into an unrestricted free agent on July 1 for the primary time in his profession if BriseBois can’t get him signed to an extension. BriseBois added in at the moment’s media availability that engaged on a take care of Stamkos over the subsequent two months is a “precedence,” though solely preliminary talks have been held.
