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Jared Bednar vs. Jon Cooper: Breaking down the Stanley Cup battle behind the benches

The biggest question posed of the Tampa Bay Lightning after Saturday night’s 7-0 drubbing by the Colorado Avalanche, in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final, was why they weren’t able to fight back. They really didn’t have an answer.

“If we want to get back into this, we need to focus on us,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said Sunday at Denver International Airport before his team flew to Tampa for Games 3 and 4, having dropped the first two.

“We really can’t control what they’re doing at all. We have to control what we’re going to do, and we just haven’t done that. Not an ideal situation we’re in, but it’s not insurmountable.”

Maybe the Lightning are flummoxed because there was another question: How is it that the Avalanche simply kept pouring it on: four goals in the first, one in the second, two in the third. The game was already in hand, but Colorado kept coming.

The answer may lie in the approach of Avalanche coach Jared Bednar, who breaks each game down into five-minute segments.

“For me, it’s just narrowing our focus, staying in the moment,” said Bednar. “You can’t do it all the time. When you hit a penalty kill or a power play, you’re trying to win the two-minute game. But we find instead of looking at the game as a whole, just breaking it down and focusing on what we have to do in our process (helps). Have a good five minutes and move on to the next.”

Not every team approaches it the same way. Tampa Bay certainly doesn’t.

“I don’t break it down into five-minute segments,” said Cooper. “I look at the entirety of the game. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. Trust me, Bednar — you see the way his team plays, he’s a hell of a coach. I just don’t view it that way.

“In (a series), when we’re just playing one team … there’s no looking ahead, there’s no looking back. You’re looking strictly at these guys. So for us, we’re dissecting the game by zone, by special teams, by breakouts, by forecheck. There’s so many different things that go into it.”

After two wins by the Avalanche, the evidence suggests Bednar’s approach is working. His players have certainly bought into it.

Coach Jared Bednar gives instructions to the Colorado Avalanche during a playoff run that’s two wins away from the NHL’s ultimate prize.

“You’ve got to narrow your focus down. If you just go out there and try to win this game, that’s a lot easier said than done,” said Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog. “Staying in the present, staying in the moment, focusing on your next shift, that’s super important. You have to be able to manage your emotions, and sometimes you have a bad five-minute segment and you’ve got to be able to reset. And sometimes seeing that clock clicking down to the next TV timeout, you want to reset and go back at it.”

Defenceman Devon Toews likes the five-minute approach: “You try to create momentum for your team … If you feel like you can build up those five-minute segments continuously, you feel like you have a good chance to win the game.”

Bednar was a journeyman blueliner as a player. He once skated professionally in a roller hockey league, but also got into 55 games with the St. John’s Maple Leafs during a tour of three minor leagues that included the now-defunct International Hockey League.

That led to coaching, and now he has a chance to do something no coach has ever done: add a Stanley Cup title after winning the AHL’s Calder Cup (with Erie in 2016) and ECHL’s Kelly Cup (with South Carolina in 2009).

“That’s pretty cool that he has that opportunity,” said veteran defenceman Jack Johnson. “I think it just speaks to his knowledge and success as a coach, and being able to get the most out of his players.”

Cooper is the longest-tenured coach in the NHL, starting with the Lightning in 2013. Bednar ranks third, also trailing Pittsburgh’s Mike Sullivan.

Bednar was thrust into the job after Patrick Roy resigned suddenly as head coach on Aug. 11, 2016. That season was a disaster. But using a player-first approach, Bednar’s regular-season record with the Avs is 240-168-46 with five consecutive playoff berths, including three straight second-round appearances before reaching the Cup final.

While Cooper has the last two Cup finals to draw from in search of a solution, Bednar can draw from his Calder and Kelly Cup experiences in hopes of maintaining momentum.

“The main thing is, you take all those experiences and you put them into your coaching philosophy and you draw back on them at different times,” said Bednar.

“You’ve got to know it’s going to be difficult … As difficult as Tampa will make it, we have to be resilient and strong in our belief that what we do, if we do it to the best of our ability, that it’ll be enough.”

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