jon Cooper, Fellows class, 1997
Tampa Bay Lightning Head coach Jon Cooper discusses how law school led to a career coaching in the National Hockey League.
When Jon Cooper (Fellows Class, 1997) took the National Hockey League (NHL) by storm, leading the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Stanley Cup finals in 2015, the WMU-Cooley graduate was instantly referred to by sports reporters and commentators as the “lawyer coach.” 2
Cooper landed the top job with the Lightning near the end of the 2012-13 season. One season later, in 2015, Cooper led the Bolts to the Eastern Conference Championship, only to miss hoisting the cup by two games in the Stanley Cup finals. This season, Cooper and the Lightning fell one game short of their second consecutive Stanley Cup final, losing to the eventual champion Pittsburgh Penguins in seven games during the Eastern Conference final. Cooper, a former collegiate lacrosse player, recently shared with Benchmark Magazine how his path from being a college athlete led to a job on Wall Street, then to a job as a public defender, and, ultimately, to his career as head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Cooper’s coaching start was humble. His first taste of coaching hockey was for a local high school team, but he caught the coaching bug when he led the Lansing Catholic Central Cougars hockey team to the state regional championship – a feat that high school hadn’t claimed in 25 years. That experience made him step back and reflect upon his goals. He made the difficult decision to pursue his love for sports and, especially, his passion for coaching. Cooper went on to coach a number of junior hockey teams in Michigan before getting his first full-time coaching job in Texarkana, Texas. He continued his climb to the NHL by coaching teams in St. Louis, Missouri; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Norfolk, Virginia; and Syracuse, New York.