Nevertheless, the coach needed to reiterate to his gamers they nonetheless have loads of work to do within the final sport of the collection at Benchmark Worldwide Area on Sunday (6 p.m. ET; The Spot, HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS, CBC).
The Lightning prolonged the best-of-7 collection with a 1-0 additional time win in Recreation 6 at Bell Centre in Montreal on Friday.
“Within the locker room after the sport, positive guys have been pumped, however we’ve not received something but,” Cooper mentioned. “All we did was win a sport to ship this again to Tampa and preserve our season alive.
“You do not need to rain on the parade, as a result of what a hell of a win by the fellows. However we’ve not achieved something but. We have simply pushed a sport.”
The Lightning have fared nicely in win-or-go-home conditions since Cooper arrived in 2013. Tampa Bay is 4-2, together with 2-1 at residence, in Recreation 7s throughout his tenure as coach. Tampa Bay has received its previous two, together with 2-1 on the Toronto Maple Leafs in a 2022 first-round collection, and 1-0 right here towards the New York Islanders within the 2021 convention finals.
All six video games on this collection have been determined by one purpose and 4 have required additional time with every workforce successful twice within the further interval. Gage Goncalves received Recreation 6 at 9:03.
“It has been unreal, to be trustworthy; we each had 106 factors coming into this collection,” mentioned Tampa Bay ahead Brandon Hagel, who has eight factors (six objectives, two assists) in six video games. “They are a actually, actually good hockey workforce over there and we’re a extremely, actually good hockey workforce right here.
“I do not assume we anticipated the rest aside from what’s been happening right here. They have all the pieces over there and we predict we have got all the pieces over right here.”