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Tampa Bay Lightning coach John Cooper, left, warned that if the Leafs split their main members, his team would try to take them. USA TODAY SPORTS
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John Cooper has a message – call it a warning – for anyone who thinks the Toronto Maple Leafs need to break their core just because they lost again in Game 7 in the first round of the playoffs.
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You’ll regret.
“I am not in this room. I’m training Tampa Bay Lightning, “Cooper said after a 2-1 victory over Toronto on Saturday night. “But I know some of their players. I was behind the bench with Morgan Riley. I was behind the bench with Mitch Marner. I was behind the bench with Aston Matthews.
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“And if these guys became available, I would be the first in line to put them on my team.”
It wasn’t Cooper trying to advise Leafs fans who were wondering if their team would ever overcome the hump. Rather, it was a sign of respect for the team that gave the best, but still failed in a series of the best of the seven that reached the distance.
“It was as much of a series as you’ll see,” Cooper said. “It was not 4-0. It was that we lost 3-2 in the series and found a way, but it was as close as possible. I personally answered the same questions that they will answer now three years ago – perhaps in a different way, I guess, because we had gone to the final a few years earlier – but they gave us everything we could handle. .
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Cooper had in mind the 2019 season when Tampa Bay finished with the best overall record in the NHL before being swept away by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round of the playoffs. The following year, they won the Stanley Cup. And then he won it again last year.
Could this happen to Leaf?
“Without a doubt, this is a great hockey team,” said Lightning captain Stephen Stamkos. “They have all the pieces. It’s not easy. It is not easy at this time of year. We’ve talked about this as a band before. We’ve had some setbacks in the past and we’re just moving on, and you just have to get over the hump. This is the job. Sometimes it becomes mental. But it certainly wasn’t, because they’re not worthy of it. They are.
“They are a team that was one of the most difficult series we have probably played in terms of having star players, having a goalkeeper, solid defenders, you are on the list and they have everything. We just believed in ourselves. We knew it was going to be a long series. We talked about it from the beginning … Game 7 can go any way. ”
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For Toronto, which has now failed to advance to the first round in six consecutive years, it continues to go the wrong way – especially in Game 7s or the elimination games.
In 2018, they lost 7-4 in Game 7 of the Boston Bruins. A year later, they lost 5-1 to the Bruins in Game 7. In 2020, they were eliminated 3-0 in Game 5 of the Top Five against Columbus. Last year, they lost 3-1 to Montreal in Game 7 after leading 3-1 in the series.
This year, it seemed that Toronto finally had the team to do it. But the Leafs, who had a 3-2 lead in the series, could not close the two-time defending champions, who beat Toronto 4-3 in extra time in Game 6 before taking Game 7 in another close victory.
“The bottom line is that there were eight teams in the Eastern Conference with more than 100 points,” Cooper said. “Three of them went to Game 7s, and one was the Presidents’ Trophy, which went on and had to fight to win its series. And that’s exactly how it was. So there would be four teams with over 100 points that would come out in the first round and fortunately we were not one of them, but it took everything to knock out these guys. “
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As for what follows for Leafs, at least the Lightning player said he would not be surprised if they followed the success of Tampa Bay.
“Incredible team. Hard to run series. Close the matches, “said Lightning defender Victor Hedman. “They have some amazing players. They fought hard. Today was a close match, it could go in any direction. They are a great group. Their best players are still very young – well, not very young, but still young in this league – and they will get another chance at that.
“Obviously we are very happy to be on top, but they are a great team. They will have a long way to go in the future. “
mtraikos@postmedia.com
twitter.com/Michael_Traikos
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