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\n Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is taking time away from the team following his father Robert’s death. Assistant coach Rob Zettler will lead the team for their next two games while Cooper handles family matters in Vancouver.\n <\/p>\n
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Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is stepping away from his coaching duties for two games following the passing of his father, Robert Cooper.<\/p>\n
The Lightning organization announced that assistant coach Rob Zettler has taken over as interim head coach, leading the team during Wednesday evening\u2019s matchup against Toronto at home and will continue in that role for Thursday\u2019s road game in Carolina.<\/p>\n
Cooper, who guided Tampa Bay to back-to-back Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021, recently returned from coaching duties with Team Canada at the Milan Cortina Olympics, where his squad earned silver medals after falling 2-1 in overtime to Team USA in the championship match.<\/p>\n
Speaking before Wednesday\u2019s contest against the Maple Leafs, Zettler expressed support for his colleague during this difficult time. \u201cThoughts and prayers, as always, to Coop and his family,\u201d Zettler stated. \u201cThat was the No. 1 thing, that he takes care of business back home. He left this morning to go back to Vancouver. What I am in confident in is our guys. They\u2019ve been excellent in so many ways this year, including in times like this where he\u2019s Coop\u2019s missing or something happens to one of the guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Hockey League resumed play Wednesday following its Olympic break. Tampa Bay currently sits atop the Atlantic Division with a comfortable six-point advantage, and their 78 points match Carolina\u2019s total for the Eastern Conference lead.<\/p>\n
The Lightning demonstrated exceptional form heading into the Olympic pause, posting an impressive 19-1-1 record across their final 21 contests.<\/p>\n
More from TV Delmarva Channel 33 News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper is taking time away from the team following his father Robert’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[56123,56124,56117,56125,56119,56120,56118,56121,5,189,4,540,92,5168,5167,56122],"class_list":{"0":"post-472112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-lightning","8":"tag-102-3","9":"tag-102-3fm","10":"tag-fine-day","11":"tag-fine-day-102-3","12":"tag-fine-day-fm","13":"tag-fine-day-media","14":"tag-fine-day-radio","15":"tag-have-a-fine-day","16":"tag-hockey","17":"tag-lightning","18":"tag-nhl","19":"tag-tampa-bay","20":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","21":"tag-tampabay","22":"tag-tampabaylightning","23":"tag-weller-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116134256009467319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}