Ryan Craig began his NHL career in a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey nearly 20 years ago. On Tuesday, he\u2019ll stand behind the bench opposite Tampa Bay as an NHL head coach for the first time.<\/p>\n
Craig is set to face the team that gave him his first NHL chance when the Lightning visit the Golden Knights in a 10:30 p.m. ET matchup at T-Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n
Craig spent the bulk of his playing career in Tampa after the team selected him in the eighth round of the 2002 NHL Draft. He played 184 games as a Bolt from 2005-09 in a run that included a career-best 15-goal, 28-point rookie season in 2005-06.<\/p>\n
He was there for Tampa Bay\u2019s 2004 Stanley Cup championship, serving as one of Tampa Bay\u2019s taxi squad players during the postseason. Two seasons later, Craig scored his first NHL goal in his NHL debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the situation there,\u201d Craig said. \u201cFirst and foremost, our two oldest of three children were born in Tampa, so it\u2019s always going to be a special place for us.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing given an opportunity with a call-up in December of \u201906 there, I got to live out my dream and play with those guys that I watched win the Stanley Cup a few years earlier in Vinny (Lecavalier) and Marty (St. Louis), Brad Richards and Dan Boyle and play for John Tortorella. You could go on and on through the group that was there, and there\u2019s lots of guys from that team that I still talk to today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following 14 seasons of playing professional hockey, including 198 NHL games and a 2016 Calder Cup championship, Craig retired in 2017.<\/p>\n
Lightning assistant coach Jeff Halpern is among those who\u2019ve seen Craig\u2019s hockey career from numerous perspectives\u2014Halpern played alongside Craig in Tampa during the 2007-08 season.<\/p>\n
They then stood on opposing benches as AHL assistant coaches for two seasons from 2016 to 2018 and continued to do so at the NHL level.\u00a0The former teammates stayed in touch throughout their playing days and continued to talk during their respective climbs up the coaching ranks.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good teammate when he was here,\u201d Halpern said of Craig. \u201cWe\u2019ve kept in touch over the years by just seeing him in different places and while coaching, too, so I\u2019ve known him for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig broke into coaching as an assistant coach for Vegas\u2019 inaugural season in 2017-18 and served in that role for six seasons. He helped Vegas win the Stanley Cup in 2023 before moving into the head coach\u2019s chair with the team\u2019s AHL affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights.<\/p>\n
After nearly a decade in the Vegas organization,\u00a0Craig now finds himself in\u00a0his first season as an NHL head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal, and any player\u2019s goal getting started in this game, is to be an NHL player. And as I went in my career, I was fortunate that after getting drafted by Tampa I spent seven seasons in the organization before moving on to two more with Pittsburgh and then five with Columbus,\u201d Craig said. “As I left Tampa, you’re leaving there almost close to 30, and you want to stay in the game and you’re going to a new team for the first time, and that’s when I probably started to think about coaching a little bit. I always played for good coaches that I respected, and to me it’s the closest way to staying in the game, in the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
He takes that mentality into Tuesday\u2019s game against one of his former teams\u2014and some former teammates. Halpern wasn\u2019t at all surprised when he learned\u00a0Craig was staying in hockey after his playing career.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying against former teammates and coaching against them is one thing, but I think it’s a great opportunity for him, and he did well in Henderson,\u201d Halpern said. \u201cSo far he\u2019s getting off to a really good start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another familiar face awaits Craig on Tuesday, this one on the matchup card\u2014Lightning captain Victor Hedman\u2019s rookie season in 2009-10 was also Craig\u2019s final year in the organization.<\/p>\n
Craig played three NHL games that season, so their interactions were somewhat limited. Still, Hedman was quickly impressed by the player-turned-coach, who also captained the franchise\u2019s AHL team in Springfield that season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was roommates with Stammer,\u201d Hedman remembered. \u201cHe\u2019s a great guy. He was obviously a little bit older than me, but he was great in the room and a hardworking player, so it\u2019s always fun to see those guys behind the bench now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good leader, that’s for sure,\u201d Hedman continued. \u201cYou look at some of these guys like Marty (St. Louis), and it\u2019s kind of a no-brainer to see him go behind the bench with the way he thought the game and the way he played and just his smarts around the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Craig prepares to face the Lightning as an NHL head coach for the first time this week. He\u2019s tasked with crafting a game plan for some of the league\u2019s top players in a matchup of NHL heavyweights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win, and they do too,\u201d Craig said of the game. \u201cObviously I respect the organization, the opportunity I was given there and have a ton of respect for how they’ve gone about their business with winning multiple Cups the last handful of years and the standard they’ve set as an organization. I respect the staff that’s there, the players that are there. For me, it\u2019s a real good opportunity for our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig’s game plan is set to be tested against another prominent hockey mind in defending Jack Adams Award winner and Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. The coaches have crossed paths a few times on opposing benches.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I respect about Coop is how he communicates with his players, how he’s gone about his longevity with that group and that core group there, that\u2019s something that I think every coach strives for\u2026It can be a little bit different if they play their 11 and 7 because there’s opportunities to jump some of those high-end forwards out at certain times in the game, so we’ll have to be prepared and understand who’s on the ice in those situations as a group. I expect it to be a really good hockey game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuesday is a matchup between two of the league\u2019s best teams in the early days of the 2026-27 season. It\u2019s another test for Craig, whose life in hockey has shifted from fighting to earn a Lightning logo on his jersey to facing it head-to-head behind the bench.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s taking in every moment, not much different than his approach to breaking into the NHL as a Bolt.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy reaction (to being a coach someday) would have been that I’m just trying to stay in the NHL today as a player,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would have been my reaction. It’s the greatest league in the world. We’re privileged to work in it any way you can. Back in my time in Tampa, I was a guy who was trying to find a way to stay in the National Hockey League, stay healthy, keep playing, but also enjoy living out my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Craig began his NHL career in a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey nearly 20 years ago. On Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-433112","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\/433112","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=433112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}