Lightning head coach Jon Cooper discussed his team’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Maple Leafs, who swept the 2024-25 regular-season series against Tampa.
On the message to the team after the 2-0 deficit inside the first three minutes:
Embarassing first three and a half minutes. That was it.
On the team’s response after falling behind 2-0:
The power play in the first gave us momentum.
It was unfortunate (to fall 2-0 behind) to a team coming off of a back-to-back.
It is tough. We just came off an eight-game road trip, got in super late, and came in to play a game. In history, those have proven to be tough.
I hated the way we came out. In saying that, for 57 minutes, we leaned on him. They are a first-placed team and one of the best teams in the league. As that game kept going, we did a lot of good things.
If you dig yourself a 2-0 hole, we were able to come back and salvage a point, but it is tough to do that against good teams.
Give the guys credit. They battled. It was just a really tough start for us.
On the importance of his team battling back to at least grab a point:
If they win the division, they deserve to beat us because they swept us this year. In the end, that is what it is going to come down to.
Even if we did win tonight, I wasn’t going to sit here and say, “We are going to win the division.” We might’ve been in the driver’s seat, but…
For us to battle back and get a point… We still have an opportunity to win. We have an opportunity to salvage some home ice here, too. All of the points are extremely important for us.
They bent. They didn’t break. We had 90-some-odd shot attempts tonight, but it is a little unheard of that we only had 28 shots on goal. It is a lot on us. We missed the net 26 times. That is a lot. We had 36 blocked. I know they block shots, but they don’t block 36 of them.
We were probably a little guilty of not executing on some of the things we could’ve. In that sense, if we are going to keep playing the way we did after the slow start, I will take our chances.
It was two good teams going at it. That is what you are going to see.
On Brayden Point dropping the gloves vs. Bobby McMann:
It is one thing about our team. Everybody is willing. Everyone will do it. There are certain guys who don’t do it often, but when he time comes, it happens.
It is why he is a really respected teammate.
