Things are falling off the rails in Tampa; head coach Jon Cooper benches 3 star players
Man, things are not looking great in Tampa right now. The Lightning are 3-4-3 in their last 10 games, they paid a massive price for Tanner Jeannot at the deadline, while their rivals added more impact players for lower prices, and now Coach John Cooper is benching his star players.
During the Lightning's 5-3 loss to the Sabres today, Stephen Stamkos, Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov all logged identical ice time in the third period. Zero. Cooper benched his 3 most important forwards for an entire period while the team was down and trying to get back into the game. His reasoning was that he felt the other 3 lines were giving the team a better chance to win.
We've got a lot of pride in this this room and in our organization. It's not a situation where you're upset with guys or you feel differently about guys. You've got to come here and go to work. It's the best league in the world with the best players in the world. If you're not on it and you're not giving it to the standard that this franchise has set the bar for, for me, the league in the last how many years? You can't go out there. Like I said, those guys are the reason we have a standard that high. It's because of those guys. Just for a period tonight, that was it. - John Cooper
Cooper's tactics here were certainly heavy handed. Not only benching his best players, but publicly calling them out afterwards. One has to wonder if after 10 years, Cooper's message is beginning to get stale. This could be the beginning of him losing the room in Tampa.
Of course, the Lightning have been to three straight Stanley Cup finals and won two of them. I'm nowhere near writing them off as of right now. It's certainly something to keep an eye on, however. If this turns out to be a one time thing, then it's effective coaching. If it becomes a habit as the regular season winds down, there could be trouble brewing in paradise.
