Retired Michigan judge proud to be part of Jon Cooper’s Stanley Cup story

Mark Falkner

| The Detroit News

They were as different as two teams could be, separated by 20 years.

In 2000, the “Bad News Bears” of hockey, a patchwork group of high school hockey players in East Lansing won a regional tile coached by future Stanley Cup champion Jon Cooper, who went on to lead the Tampa Bay Lightning to the NHL title in 2020.

However, Cooper’s two teams 20 years apart had more in common than meets the eye and taught valuable lessons on how to build championship-caliber teams, according to retired Michigan District Court judge Thomas Brennan Jr.

Brennan needed someone to coach his son’s team at Lansing Catholic Central and Cooper, a Michigan lawyer who had never coached before and was handling Brennan’s court-appointed work for $1,000/month to represent clients who couldn’t afford legal fees, agreed to take over the team which won only 7 of 24 games the year before.

Cooper led the freshman-dominated Cougars to its first regional hockey title in 25 years, highlighted by Jeff Swan’s winning goal with 36 seconds left in the first overtime period to beat Mattawan 3-2 in the Division III final at Southside Arena in Grand Rapids.

This week, Cooper’s Lightning team (3-1-1) will host the Detroit Red Wings (2-5-1) in a two-game series on Wednesday and Friday in Tampa Bay.

“When I picked Jon to coach our team, I had a hunch he would be perfect but I wasn’t thinking to myself, I’m going to turn him into an NHL coach,” Brennan said. “He bailed me out and did me the biggest favor I could ask. He made a memory for my son and his buddies, lifelong memories. I’m forever grateful. He made me look good.”

Brennan, elected four times to serve as a judge in Ingham County’s 55th District Court from 1981-2004, said Swan’s OT goal and the team’s “trip of a lifetime” to Maple Leaf Gardens were similar to Cooper’s successful playoff run to the Cup last year.

Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point scored in the fifth overtime in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs last season to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, the team which swept Cooper’s heavily-favored team the previous year. (The 2019 Lightning tied the 1996 Red Wings for most wins in a regular season with 62 victories).

Cooper also took his Tampa Bay team to Sweden in 2020 for a preseason team-building trip in the hometown of defenseman Victor Hedman. In 2000, the Cougars visited Toronto’s hockey mecca and home to the 13-time Cup champion Maple Leafs,

“It’s funny how things come full circle, our OT goal, our trip to Toronto,” Brennan said. “When I look back, Jon just had this ‘It’ factor, a natural ability to be a leader, a motivator. It was a non-offensive swagger that the boys gravitated to. He was a cool coach.”

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Swan, now 36 and six months away from earning his Ph.D. in biochemistry while working at a medical lab in Santa Cruz, California, says Cooper taught him that “synergy and chemistry are more important than raw talent” when building teams.

“I was kind of a handful, man,” Swan said. “I was always trying to be the center of attention, the center of the joke and was sometimes in trouble with Coop. But he liked me. I was one of the weaker skaters on the team, skinny and only 120 pounds but he put me with the two best players, Sean King and Mike Sachau. (King and Sachau were 1-2 in scoring with 44 combined goals in the regular season).

“He played four lines and we all had a role. I was always the last one into the offensive zone so I went to the net and looked for rebounds. I didn’t score all year until the final game of the regular season. Then I scored on a rebound in overtime in that final game. I can still remember celebrating with my teammates, being on the bottom of the pile.”

At the awards banquet at the end of the season, Cooper gave Swan the most improved player award after nearly cutting the freshman forward.

“I really learned about being a good teammate, how to divide up work and get the best from everyone,” Swan said. “I never played hockey after high school, no college sports, nothing, but I know how to manage a team. When we would talk about stats, he would say, ‘Did your line score? Did you make a difference.’ You don’t need to get the assists. That’s when it really started to click in.”

Tom Brennan III was a sophomore goalie on the Lansing Catholic team and said they knew right away something was different about Cooper, who had been playing recreational hockey on his dad’s “Legal Eagles” team.

“He was more like our team captain than a coach,” said Brennan, who had a 2.79 goals against average during the regular season and an 87-minute shutout streak during the playoffs. “He was fully engaged, full throttle and his excitement level mimicked ours. Even at practice you could feel a shift in mentality, practicing with a purpose. On the game-winning goal, he jumped higher on the bench than anyone.”

Now a facilities manager for National Heritage Academies in Grand Rapids, Brennan, 37, remembers being “awestruck” standing at the Zamboni entrance at Maple Leaf Gardens before skating on the ice with Cooper and his teammates.

“We were already bonded as a team but that just drove it even further,” Brennan said. “Growing up, we heard stories about the decades of great hockey players who played at Maple Leaf Gardens. That was a cool experience. We also got to skate on an outdoor rink with local Toronto kids. Not many high school teams get an opportunity like that.”

Two weeks after the awards banquet, Cooper, who grew up in Prince George, British Columbia, played lacrosse at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., and earned a law degree from Western Michigan’s Cooley Law School in Lansing, left the high school team to be an assistant coach with Michigan travel team Capital City Pride.

Cooper eventually won two championships with the St. Louis Bandits of the North American Hockey League in 2007 and 2008 and one title each with the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League in 2010 and the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League in 2012.

Promoted to the Lightning by current Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman in 2013, Cooper has made the playoffs in six of eight seasons, won a Stanley Cup in the Edmonton bubble last year and his .646 winning percentage ranks second only to Scotty Bowman’s .657 percentage for coaches with more than 500 games. (Bowman won three Cups in nine years in Detroit with a .655 winning percentage in the playoffs).

“Right from the get go, he (Cooper) made it abundantly clear to me, this was his team,” Brennan said. “I was in his court now. He was the judge and I was the lawyer. Now, you look at his life, his career, it’s like (1939 movie) “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He’s a great model and he made a big difference in those kids’ lives. I’m just proud to be a small part of the now famous Coop story.”

mfalkner@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @falkner