from Damian Cristodero of the Tampa Bay Times,

"To hear somebody say the playoffs are history, I don't know," Cooper said. "Until the final buzzer goes in the last game of the season, I'm coming here to make the playoffs. I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but when Steve (Yzerman) offered me the job, I said, 'Are you sure you want to do this?' He said, 'I want to do this.' Because if you do this I'm going to try to screw up your draft pick. That's where we're at."

Cooper hit several topics in the relatively short session before the game with the Sabres, which he watched with Yzerman from the Lightning's suite.

He said he wants his teams to be a combination of the 1970s Flyers and 1980s Oilers: "It's no secret, you can look up the stats with penalty minutes and fighting majors our teams have had. But nobody would call us a goon team. We play hard, and that's all I ask, that we play hard and we're hard to play against. Nobody is going to be the '80 Oilers, and nobody is going to be the '70s Flyers. But if we can mix a little of that and have players that couple both those teams ... but, again, it's just trying to make an analogy."

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