'A wild adventure’: Coach Jon Cooper hits 1,000 NHL games with Lightning

Twenty-two years ago today, Jon Cooper was likely standing—or perhaps running—in a multi-use entertainment facility in Texarkana, Texas during the early days of his hockey coaching career.

Cooper, then in his 30s, might have been educating his junior hockey team about the breakout. Perhaps he was preparing to hit the sidewalks to sell tickets to upcoming games. He might have been on his hands and knees repainting the ice sheet for the following night’s game.

Those days are long gone for the now two-time Stanley Cup champion, who on Wednesday will patrol the bench for his 1,000th game as an NHL head coach when the Tampa Bay Lightning visit the Anaheim Ducks.

‘A wild adventure’

Cooper’s journey to 1,000 NHL games began with the former lawyer’s career pivot to full-time hockey. It has been a win-filled journey, one highlighted by the people he made sure were there for every step.

Those same people say that as much as Cooper’s hockey knowledge deserves its praise, it is his hard work and ability to connect with others that separates him from the greatest people they’ve ever met.

Just ask the woman who fell in love with him.

Jon’s wife, Jessie Cooper, had just begun dating Jon when the latter decided to leave his law career to enter coaching full-time in Texarkana. Both Jon and Jessie were working as lawyers, but Jessie knew Jon was seeking a career he was more passionate about.

Although Jon’s opportunity in Texas came with a pay cut and plenty of risks, the young couple took the leap of faith.

“I’ll be honest, I was super young and I was graduating from law school, and I had fallen madly in love with him, so he could do no wrong,” Jessie remembered with a laugh. “And I was like, ‘This is going to be great. It’s going to be an adventure.’ I’m going to take the Michigan bar exam and then pack up my Camry and move to Texarkana.”

“And let me tell you, it was a wild adventure.”

Jessie watched Jon overcome roadblock after roadblock in Texas. Cooper and his players oversaw reinstalling the ice in the multi-use facility 15 to 20 times a season, and Cooper also had to sell all advertising on top of coaching the team. They didn’t have proper practice time, having to drive an hour to get to the rink.

Occasionally, Jessie joined players, staff and their significant others to paint the lines on the ice to speed up reinstalling ice before a game. It was never easy, but Cooper always marched on.

“You have to have fortitude and a lot of vision, and he just kept going,” Jessie remembered of those early days. “His mom always had this saying of, ‘Can't is like won't.’ And that's how he was. He was like, ‘I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take this ice out.’”

Those around Cooper know he constantly looks to the future. He sees each season as a new challenge. Jessie compared it to a volume of books on a bookshelf where each has a new story with its own cast of characters, new plots, twists and turns.

“I think he thrives on constant change, struggle, having to be creative and improvise and figuring it out on the fly. He likes that part of it, and I think it keeps him going,” she said.

As for his ability to work with others, that has always been there, too.

“There's definitely a psychological aspect to Jon of his ability to notice people. He watches people. He's a great listener, and he watches what's going on with people,” Jessie said. "So he's somebody who pays attention to little details. He cares a lot about details, even in his own life with the way his suit is cut, the way his shirts line up in his closet…He always says, ‘It’s the last 10%.' It's that last little bit that makes you special."

Eventually, the Coopers and the Texarkana Bandits moved to St. Louis, where they won back-to-back NAHL championships in 2007 and 2008. The team’s success in St. Louis earned him a promotion to the United States Hockey League with the Green Bay Gamblers, where he won another league title in 2010.

That is when Tampa Bay swooped in, hiring Cooper to lead their American Hockey League affiliate in 2010 before promoting him as their NHL head coach in 2013. The rest, as they say, is history.

Cooper’s 594 career wins entering Wednesday mark the most by an NHL coach through their first 1,000 games with a single NHL team, beating Hockey Hall of Fame member Al Arbour’s 531 wins in his first 1,000 games with the New York Islanders.

Cooper’s 594 wins are second-most all-time through any coach’s first 1,000 games, trailing only another Hockey Hall of Fame member in Scotty Bowman, who collected 598 wins. He is the fifth coach in NHL history to reach 1,000 games for one franchise.

While Cooper isn’t one to reminisce, Tampa has truly become home for the Cooper family.

“It seems surreal to me that it's been that long. However, I feel so blessed that we got to be here, that we got to be in Tampa,” Jessie said. “This is our children's home. We moved them here when they were five and three, so they don't really know any different. This is their home, and it's our home. Tampa is just a special place, and we were lucky, because a lot of markets are really unforgiving. And I would say that Tampa is as good as it gets.”

‘He’s a winner’

Lightning video coach Brian Garlock first met Cooper while working at Ferris State University’s hockey arena in Michigan one summer when Cooper’s Texarkana team used the facility for tryouts.

Garlock introduced himself, telling Cooper he would be interested in working for him someday. That happened when the team moved to St. Louis.

Former Lightning assistant coach Derek Lalonde used to coach at the college, and Garlock asked him for his thoughts on Cooper. Lalonde told Garlock immediately that Cooper was the real deal, and Garlock has never looked back.

“This guy was a huge up-and-comer and a really good guy,” Garlock said. “In my head, I was like, ‘Maybe we'll go to college. I didn't expect six or seven years later we’d be in the NHL. It's crazy to think that, but that's how it turned out.”

When Cooper offered Garlock a job, he told him he needed two things—hard work and loyalty. Cooper always returned that.

“For me it was easy to do that. I didn’t know at the time though, that’s exactly what I was going to get in return, too,” Garlock said. “As he kept getting jobs, we’d win a championship, he’d get a new job and I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to go. Is this too big of a jump for me?’ But every time, he took his people with him. That loyalty was there as long as you worked your tail off.”

“He’s somebody that has this unreal belief in themselves to figure it out but also knows that it’s about surrounding yourself with the right people. And that’s how our team is too. We might not have the best roster ever, but we definitely have the best people ever, and the bad people don’t stick around here. And that’s the culture that’s been built over time since I got here. When I think of Coop, I don’t think of this unbelievable X’s and O’s hockey coach—which he is—I think of a guy that’s all about treating people right, doing it the right way, being loyal to the people close to you and asking nothing that you’re not willing to give. That’s what I think of after 20-something years.”

Garlock described Cooper as ‘a winner’, saying he builds a winning culture by establishing strong relationships with each person in the building.

“It's the relationship he has with not only his staff, but the players, and getting the most out of everybody, making sure everybody's in a place where they're going to succeed individually, where they're going to help the overall group the most,” Garlock said. “And that's something that's been since day one, is having those pieces in place for everybody to do as good as they possibly can. And when that happens every year, you always have a chance to win.”

Zettler: ‘He has that gift’

Not long after giving a presentation at an NHL coaching clinic while he was between jobs in 2012, longtime coach Rob Zettler’s phone rang.

A young Cooper wanted to know if the experienced NHL assistant coach had any interest in joining his American Hockey League coaching staff for the Syracuse Crunch.

Zettler checked in with some references, learned more about the opportunity in Syracuse and got to know Cooper better. He quickly realized he was joining Cooper’s coaching staff.

“It was an absolute no-brainer for a number of reasons,” Zettler said. “One, because of what he'd been able to do on his climb up the ladder, but also where he was going. I wanted to work with someone young, fresh, with a new perspective on how he sees the game and how he sees how to handle players. It was probably the best move I've ever made in hockey for opportunity, for relationships, for just coming to work every day and enjoying what I do on the daily.”

Zettler, who has spent time with Cooper both in Syracuse and with the Lightning, could tell immediately that his new colleague carried an attention to detail that separates him from the crowd.

“I'd been coaching for a while already, but when I saw the detail in his approach to the game, the structure on the ice, the detail in the meetings, the presentation in the meetings, that really was like, okay, this is different,” Zettler remembers. “Coaching in the NHL, we had detail, but not that kind of detail. I don't think there was a lot of coaches that brought that kind of detail. I think it's changing now, but he kind of led the way in that area.”

Tampa Bay’s leader has a career record of 594-319-86 for a .595 career winning percentage that is the highest among the top-50 winningest coaches in league history.

“That's what keeps you at 1,000 games,” Zettler said of Cooper’s ability to win. “Every year there’s a window there for us to win a championship, and there’s all kinds of factors that go into it, for sure, but he’s a major factor.”

Zettler applauded Team Canada’s 2026 Olympics head coach for his ability to break down and simplify complicated hockey concepts for his players. Part of the reason a coach reaches 1,000 games is their ability to work with others, and Cooper is one of the best at that, according to his longtime assistant coach and friend.

“I keep coming back to the relationship part of it. It's the relationship with players, the relationship with staff, and the relationship with people above you. The general managers, presidents, all of it. And I think he checks the box on all of those,” Zettler said. “And I don't think you last that long unless you have a strong relationship in all of those areas. There's hard times in hockey, there's emotional times in hockey. There's times when you win, and there's times when you lose, and to be able to navigate through those situations and come out on top in a lot of them is a testament.”

The best example of that is Zettler’s key memory of Cooper from all of their years together. It isn’t a Stanley Cup win or a joke from the coach’s room. It’s a moment of humanity.

During training camp two years ago, the team was getting on the bus, and there was a player sitting alone who was never going to play for the Lightning.

Cooper got on the bus, walked past everybody else before sitting beside them and engaging in a 15-minute conversation for the entire bus ride. Those are the moments that separate Cooper in the eyes of those around him.

“Coop’s NHL pedigree was already in place, and he's spending that kind of time with somebody that was never going to play for him. Coop gives the gift of time to a lot of people, especially to his players,” Zettler said. “And I think they see that, and they realize that, and it's a gift. It really is, because a lot of people will find their way out of a conversation or find their way to rush through a conversation. He just doesn't do that. He has the ability to kind of pull you and show you that he cares.”