Joel Quenneville played 13 rugged seasons as an NHL defenseman. He has won 754 games as an NHL head coach. Jon Cooper played lacrosse and one year of club hockey at Hofstra University. Cooper has won 180 games as an NHL head coach.
Quenneville rocks back and forth behind the bench with a scowl of the alpha wolf eager to unleash his pack. His players and coaches, and the referees, dread the imminent diatribe. Cooper paces along the bench like an attorney reviewing his notes during a final brief. He looks like a fox that eyes the opening of the hen-house. He gently whispers into his players’ ears and quietly peruses the goings-on. It’s never as simple as one exact style versus another, but these guys are different hockey animals.
Both men coach teams that play brilliant and beautiful styles of hockey. The Chicago Blackhawks-Tampa Bay Lightning battle for the 2015 Stanley Cup will feature a bevy of skilled players on the front and back ends. The Lighting’s average age is about 27, and the Blackhawks’ is about 30. The core of the Hawks squad brings two Cups and five Western Conference Final appearances. Cooper’s Lightning were out of the playoffs just two years ago. The numbers, records, and reputations all suggest that Tampa Bay is in over their heads. Jon Cooper has probably heard that before.
Cooper’s path to the NHL began in Lansing, Michigan after completing his degree at Cooley Law School. Cooper was working as a public defender before he started out in 1999-2000 coaching Lansing Catholic High School. One of his former players commented on the style Cooper cultivated:
“Everyone on the team loved him,” said Tom Brennan III, now a 31-year-old construction coordinator in Grand Rapids. “He could make just about anybody on the team go through a brick wall without screaming at you and being the kind of hot-headed coach that sometimes you see. That’s how he was.”
He impressed enough hockey people to move on to the NAHL and USHL. In the NAHL, Cooper’s St. Louis Bandits won Robertson Cups in 2007 and 2008. Cooper also won a Clark Cup in the USHL with the Green Bay Gamblers before he won a Calder Cup in his second year with the Norfolk Admirals. In March of 2013 Steve Yzerman hired him as Tampa Bay’s new head coach.
Cooper now stands on the precipice and four games away from hockey’s Holy Grail. From the courtroom to the rink, Cooper has established a reputation for results. He has a huge fan in none other than Mike Babcock:
“Coop’s like a lot of guys … he had to earn his way here,” Babcock said in April. “He’s a lacrosse guy. He was a lawyer and decided he liked hockey more than he loved the law. He’s been successful. When you look at guys that are serial winners – a guy that everywhere he goes he wins – Coop would be in that class.”
Quenneville won’t be feeling warm and fuzzy about the Lightning or Cooper stories. His lifetime record and two rings are Hall of Fame material, but there is much more at stake. Quenneville and the Blackhawks are seeking hockey immortality. Three Cups in six years during the salary-cap era are enough to seal their reputation one of the greatest teams in NHL history. The bottom line is that winning is better than losing. When a team has come this far for so long the options aren’t attractive.
“When you’ve got a team that’s ready to win, that’s what your intentions are from the start of the season,” Quenneville said after posting his 750th win. “Whether it’s easier or not [with a top-tier team], I think it’s way more enjoyable to be on the winning side of things.”
Quenneville is 56 and Cooper is only 47. The coaching matchup for this year’s Stanley Cup Final should be a fascinating contrast of styles. Will the fiercely determined old-schooler teach the patiently erudite new schooler some harsh lessons? Or will the fox outhunt the wolf? Everyone says Chicago should bring home their third Stanley Cup in six years, but chances are that Tampa Bay will have something to say.
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