Lightning coach Jon Cooper talks penalty ‘stupidity’ after Game 1 overtime loss vs. Canadiens

The Tampa Bay Lightning took four offensive zone penalties on Sunday evening, en route to a 4-3 overtime loss to the Montreal Canadiens in Game 1 of their first-round Stanley Cup Playoff series at Benchmark International Arena.

And head coach Jon Cooper was not at all pleased afterwards.

“I had a problem with us,” the veteran bench boss said in his postgame press conference. “I mean, come on, we took four offensive-zone penalties. Just look at them. That’s not over-aggression. That’s just stupidity, you know, a lot of them. That was on us. That was a game that we just gave them an opportunity to win. This is the Stanley Cup playoffs. This isn’t Game 62. So that is extremely disappointing in the way we conducted ourselves and the amount of penalties we took.”

Here was Jon Cooper's answer about the amount of penalties his team took tonight.

"We took four offensive zone penalties. Just look at them. That was not over-aggression, that was stupidity in a lot of them." pic.twitter.com/XG8nJ74H53

— Evan Closky (@ECloskyWTSP) April 20, 2026

The Canadiens jumped out to a 1-0 lead, but the Bolts were able to score twice in the second period to take the lead. All three of Montreal’s next goals came on the powerplay — and all were scored by Juraj Slafkovsky, who recorded his first career playoff hat trick.

“Now let’s be honest, (Montreal) went 3-for-6 or whatever it was (3-for-5)?” Cooper continued. “So if you’re going to kill penalties off at 50 percent, then you’re probably not going to last very long. But if you’re killing penalties off at 50 percent when you only gave up two, so it’s 1-for-2, you know, maybe you can survive. But you can’t let that happen. So that’s on us. There’s no excuses. Nothing.”

Cooper, who coached Team Canada to a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Milan, is once again in the running for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top bench boss after leading the Lightning to a 50-26-6 record in 2025-26.

But there is not much he can do when his team takes five penalties, which isn’t a tonic for any kind of success when things tighten up in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That’s especially true considering the level of talent Montreal has on its top man advantage unit.

Cooper ended up taking just three questions from the media before leaving the podium.

The post Lightning coach Jon Cooper talks penalty ‘stupidity’ after Game 1 overtime loss vs. Canadiens appeared first on ClutchPoints.