{"id":295406,"date":"2026-06-04T04:25:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T04:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/295406\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T04:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T04:25:16","slug":"cooper-of-lightning-wins-jack-adams-award-as-top-nhl-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/295406\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper of Lightning wins Jack Adams Award as top NHL coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Jon Cooper\u00a0of the Tampa Bay Lightning is the 2025-26 recipient of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/records.nhl.com\/awards\/trophies\/jack-adams-award\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jack Adams Award<\/a>\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cthe NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team\u2019s success,\u201d\u00a0as selected by the NHL Broadcasters\u2019\u00a0Association.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper was surprised with the trophy\u00a0while at Tampa General Hospital for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Coop\u2019s Catch for Kids Family Lounge, funded with proceeds from his annual charity fishing tournament.<\/p>\n<p>A three-time Jack Adams finalist after finishing second in voting in 2018-19 and third in 2013-14, Cooper joins John Tortorella\u00a0(2003-04) as the second head coach in Lightning history to capture the trophy.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper received 36 first-place votes and was a top-three selection on 58 of 99 ballots for 226 voting points, prevailing over Lindy Ruff\u00a0of the Buffalo\u00a0Sabres\u00a0(223 points) and\u00a0Dan Muse\u00a0of the Pittsburgh Penguins (199 points) in the closest three-way Jack Adams race since balloting results for this award were first published in 1983-84. Cooper\u2019s winning margin (three voting points) is the second-narrowest overall, behind the one-point win by Ruff over\u00a0Peter Laviolette, 155-154, in 2005-06. Points are\u00a0allocated\u00a0on a 5-3-1 basis for first through third place.<\/p>\n<p>The longest-tenured active head coach in the\u00a0NHL, Cooper led Tampa Bay (50-26-6, 106 points) to its ninth consecutive playoff berth (tied for the longest current run in the League) and 12th in his 13 full seasons at the helm of the franchise. The Lightning recorded their fifth 50-win campaign under Cooper\u2019s guidance (and first since 2021-22) as well as their seventh 100-point season. They placed among the 2025-26 leaders (including shootout-deciding goals) in goal differential (2nd; +59), goals against (3rd; 231) and goals for (4th; 290). Tampa Bay also ranked among the NHL\u2019s best in 5-on-5 goals for\/against ratio (2nd; 1.29), road wins (t-2nd; 24), regulation wins (3rd; 40), comeback wins (3rd; 24), third-period goal differential (3rd; +21), penalty kill efficiency (3rd; 82.6%), home wins (t-3rd; 26) and points by defensemen (5th; 204) as Cooper \u2013 on Jan. 12 at PHI \u2013 became the second-fastest head coach in League history to reach 600 career wins (1,005 GC), behind only\u00a0Scotty Bowman\u00a0(1,002 GC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Jon Cooper\u00a0of the Tampa Bay Lightning is the 2025-26 recipient of the\u00a0Jack Adams Award\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cthe NHL coach adjudged&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-295406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}