Jon Cooper is playing a dangerous game, benches his 3 best players then tries to explain why
After three consecutive losses, the Tampa Bay Lightning were desperate for a win facing Buffalo on the road today. Since the team acquired Tanner Jeannot from Nashville for an absurd price at the deadline, the team has struggled greatly, and today's game against Buffalo was no different.
However it wasn't Tampa's bottom six that wasn't able to get the job done today - it was their star players, Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Brayden Point. Down multiple goals in the third period, coach Jon Cooper was so dissatisfied with their performance, that his first line didn't see any ice time in the third period.
After the game, Cooper scathed his first line for their performance, and raved about the depth of the team and their culture of winning above all else, which led to the decision to bench the stars.
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 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
Tampa ended up falling to Buffalo by a score of 5-3, after going down by a score of 5-1 in the second period. With their loss, they're now firmly in third place in the Atlantic division, set to take on the Maple Leafs on the road in the first round of the playoffs.
| POLL | ||
Is Jon Cooper going to lose the room soon? | ||
| Yes | 35 | 25.9 % |
| No | 42 | 31.1 % |
| He won back to back Stanley cups, stop it | 46 | 34.1 % |
| Maybe, but he won't get fired | 12 | 8.9 % |
| List of polls | ||
