- Jon Cooper wins his first Jack Adams Award in his third nomination
- Cooper edges heavy favorite Lindy Ruff by three voting points
- Read below for the full voting breakdown and the surprise reveal at TGH
Jon Cooper finally has a Jack Adams Award.
The Tampa Bay Lightning head coach was named the 2026 winner Wednesday after guiding the Lightning to a 50-26-6 record and a ninth straight playoff berth. It’s his first NHL coach of the year in three trips to the finalist round, edging fellow finalists Lindy Ruff of Buffalo and Dan Muse of Pittsburgh.
The Closest Race in 20 Years
Ruff was the betting favorite walking in. He had dragged the longest playoff drought in NHL history to a close in Buffalo, and voters traditionally eat that kind of turnaround story up.
Cooper finished with 226 voting points and 36 first-place votes. Ruff was right there at 223 points and 26 firsts, with Muse third at 199. The three-point margin is the second-narrowest in Jack Adams history, behind only Ruff’s own one-point win over Peter Laviolette back in 2005-06.
Chris Johnston of The Athletic posted the full tabulation:
The Surprise at TGH
Cooper didn’t find out in a conference room. He was at Tampa General Hospital for a ribbon-cutting on a new pediatric cancer family lounge sponsored by his Coop’s Catch for Kids foundation when the league walked the trophy in.
Take a look at the reveal, caught on camera by 10 Tampa Bay:
How Cooper Got Here
On the numbers, this one wrote itself. Tampa Bay piled up 106 standings points to tie for fifth in the league while burning through injuries all season. The Lightning finished fourth in goals scored, third in goals against, and third on the penalty kill, the franchise’s first 50-win season since 2021-22.
Two milestones earlier in the year made the resume even harder to ignore. Cooper coached his 1,000th career NHL game on Dec. 31, all of them with Tampa Bay, and 12 days later became the second-fastest coach in league history to 600 wins with a 5-1 win over Philadelphia. Only Scotty Bowman got there quicker.
The honor pairs Cooper with John Tortorella (2004) as the only coaches in Lightning history to win the Jack Adams. The Lightning are watching the Stanley Cup Final from home after a first-round exit, but Cooper now has some hardware of his own to take into the offseason.
