Ryan Craig began his NHL career in a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey nearly 20 years ago. On Tuesday, he’ll stand behind the bench opposite Tampa Bay as an NHL head coach for the first time.
Craig is set to face the team that gave him his first NHL chance when the Lightning visit the Golden Knights in a 10:30 p.m. ET matchup at T-Mobile Arena.
Craig spent the bulk of his playing career in Tampa after the team selected him in the eighth round of the 2002 NHL Draft. He played 184 games as a Bolt from 2005-09 in a run that included a career-best 15-goal, 28-point rookie season in 2005-06.
He was there for Tampa Bay’s 2004 Stanley Cup championship, serving as one of Tampa Bay’s taxi squad players during the postseason. Two seasons later, Craig scored his first NHL goal in his NHL debut.
“My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the situation there,” Craig said. “First and foremost, our two oldest of three children were born in Tampa, so it’s always going to be a special place for us.
“Being given an opportunity with a call-up in December of ’06 there, I got to live out my dream and play with those guys that I watched win the Stanley Cup a few years earlier in Vinny (Lecavalier) and Marty (St. Louis), Brad Richards and Dan Boyle and play for John Tortorella. You could go on and on through the group that was there, and there’s lots of guys from that team that I still talk to today.”
Following 14 seasons of playing professional hockey, including 198 NHL games and a 2016 Calder Cup championship, Craig retired in 2017.
Lightning assistant coach Jeff Halpern is among those who’ve seen Craig’s hockey career from numerous perspectives—Halpern played alongside Craig in Tampa during the 2007-08 season.
They then stood on opposing benches as AHL assistant coaches for two seasons from 2016 to 2018 and continued to do so at the NHL level. The former teammates stayed in touch throughout their playing days and continued to talk during their respective climbs up the coaching ranks.
“He was a good teammate when he was here,” Halpern said of Craig. “We’ve kept in touch over the years by just seeing him in different places and while coaching, too, so I’ve known him for a long time.”
Craig broke into coaching as an assistant coach for Vegas’ inaugural season in 2017-18 and served in that role for six seasons. He helped Vegas win the Stanley Cup in 2023 before moving into the head coach’s chair with the team’s AHL affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights.
After nearly a decade in the Vegas organization, Craig now finds himself in his first season as an NHL head coach.
“My goal, and any player’s goal getting started in this game, is to be an NHL player. And as I went in my career, I was fortunate that after getting drafted by Tampa I spent seven seasons in the organization before moving on to two more with Pittsburgh and then five with Columbus,” Craig said. "As I left Tampa, you're leaving there almost close to 30, and you want to stay in the game and you're going to a new team for the first time, and that's when I probably started to think about coaching a little bit. I always played for good coaches that I respected, and to me it's the closest way to staying in the game, in the fight.”
He takes that mentality into Tuesday’s game against one of his former teams—and some former teammates. Halpern wasn’t at all surprised when he learned Craig was staying in hockey after his playing career.
“Playing against former teammates and coaching against them is one thing, but I think it's a great opportunity for him, and he did well in Henderson,” Halpern said. “So far he’s getting off to a really good start.”
Another familiar face awaits Craig on Tuesday, this one on the matchup card—Lightning captain Victor Hedman’s rookie season in 2009-10 was also Craig’s final year in the organization.
Craig played three NHL games that season, so their interactions were somewhat limited. Still, Hedman was quickly impressed by the player-turned-coach, who also captained the franchise’s AHL team in Springfield that season.
“He was roommates with Stammer,” Hedman remembered. “He’s a great guy. He was obviously a little bit older than me, but he was great in the room and a hardworking player, so it’s always fun to see those guys behind the bench now.”
“He was a good leader, that's for sure,” Hedman continued. “You look at some of these guys like Marty (St. Louis), and it’s kind of a no-brainer to see him go behind the bench with the way he thought the game and the way he played and just his smarts around the game.”
Now Craig prepares to face the Lightning as an NHL head coach for the first time this week. He’s tasked with crafting a game plan for some of the league’s top players in a matchup of NHL heavyweights.
“We want to win, and they do too,” Craig said of the game. “Obviously I respect the organization, the opportunity I was given there and have a ton of respect for how they've gone about their business with winning multiple Cups the last handful of years and the standard they've set as an organization. I respect the staff that's there, the players that are there. For me, it’s a real good opportunity for our team.”
Craig's game plan is set to be tested against another prominent hockey mind in defending Jack Adams Award winner and Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. The coaches have crossed paths a few times on opposing benches.
“What I respect about Coop is how he communicates with his players, how he's gone about his longevity with that group and that core group there, that’s something that I think every coach strives for…It can be a little bit different if they play their 11 and 7 because there's opportunities to jump some of those high-end forwards out at certain times in the game, so we'll have to be prepared and understand who's on the ice in those situations as a group. I expect it to be a really good hockey game.”
Tuesday is a matchup between two of the league’s best teams in the early days of the 2026-27 season. It’s another test for Craig, whose life in hockey has shifted from fighting to earn a Lightning logo on his jersey to facing it head-to-head behind the bench.
He’s taking in every moment, not much different than his approach to breaking into the NHL as a Bolt.
“My reaction (to being a coach someday) would have been that I'm just trying to stay in the NHL today as a player,” he said. “That would have been my reaction. It's the greatest league in the world. We're privileged to work in it any way you can. Back in my time in Tampa, I was a guy who was trying to find a way to stay in the National Hockey League, stay healthy, keep playing, but also enjoy living out my dream.”
