Lightning’s video coach remembers Cup victory

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This article was published 18/11/2019 (2120 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TAMPA, Fla. — Nigel Kirwan doesn’t retrieve his Stanley Cup ring from a safety deposit box often but was cajoled by the old gang from St. John’s-Ravenscourt School to bring the hard-earned bauble home a few years ago.

It’s not that the former Winnipegger has distanced himself from the past — far from it. He occasionally pulls up video from the 2004 NHL playoffs and fast-forwards to the good parts, of which there were no shortage as the Tampa Bay Lightning captured their first and only Stanley Cup championship.

And the memory of lifting the sacred mug above his head comes back with impact.

“I remember as a kid skating at Dutton Memorial Arena (on the SJR grounds) with all my buddies and you’re hoisting fake Stanley Cups, or you’re playing street hockey and you’d always pretend to be in the NHL. I had all those aspirations but I wasn’t a good player. So, to actually stand on this ice and hold it over my head was something I’ll never forget,” says Kirwan, the Lightning’s video coach and one of just a few in the organization who’ve been around since the very beginning — the NHL’s expansion to the Gulf Coast in 1992.

“Fifteen years ago, I can’t believe it’s been that long. I remember it like it was yesterday. We wrapped up here (downtown Tampa) in Game 7 against Calgary (Flames). Marty St. Louis, Vinnie Lecavalier, Dave Andreychuk, Brad Richards, Dan Boyle, it was a great crew and you don’t forget those guys. We had a special bond. That team was especially tight and we’re all still close to this day.”

One of the game’s great characters, John Tortorella, was the driving force behind that championship run, Kirwan acknowledges.

“He was the guy I give the most credit to,” says Kirwan. “We’re still really tight and I think he’s one of the most misunderstood guys in hockey. He’s not the ogre he appears to be on TV, he’s a really nice, good man and I thoroughly enjoyed working for him.

“When he took over, that team was a bit of a joke and hadn’t done well for years and years, and the culture needed to change and needed a kick in the butt and he was the right guy at the right time to come along and chance the mindset of the organization.”

Kirwin, 50, was born in Jamaica moved with his family to Winnipeg when he was two years old, played minor hockey in Fort Garry and attended SJR before attending Western University in London, Ont., and then joining his family in Florida.

While completing a second degree (finance) at the University of Tampa, he accept an offer from a friend who was working for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to help out in the equipment department of the NFL team, and he did that part time for three years. In 1992, another friend coaxed him to apply for a sales job with expansion Lightning, and he was hired. He was also coaching hockey and mentoring other coaches in the Tampa area.

The Lightning were aligned with amateur hockey groups in the area, and two years into his sales job Kirwan was offered a newly created position of director of amateur hockey for the NHL team, in addition to his sales job. He developed a kinship with the team’s first head coach Terry Crisp, who made an offer he couldn’t refuse in ‘96.

“We were a couple of months into the season, and I walked down here and didn’t know what the heck I was supposed to do. There weren’t a lot of us. Not every team had a video coach in those days, I was one of a half a dozen guys around the league doing it. Games were on VHS tapes and it took forever,” he says.

During his tenure, he’s worked or some big-name bench bosses, such as Jacques Demers (1997-99), Tortorella (2000-08), Rich Tocchet (2008-10), Guy Boucher (2010-13) and present coach, Jon Cooper, who was handed the reins in March 2013, He also worked for Tortorella on the Team USA coaching staff at the 2016 World Cup.

Kirwan says despite the outspoken and often fiery public persona of the man affectionately known as Torts, he rarely lost his cool with the rest of his coaches. But early one morning when some reports were due on his desk and the printer was malfunctioning, the video coach was in the doghouse.

“I had this habit of defaulting to calling him John when I had something bad to tell him, and I remember saying the copier was broken. He walks out and slams the door, and all I heard was ‘crash, bang, boom, smash, F-bomb…’ And I didn’t want to see what he did in that part of the office,” he says. “Five minutes later our goalie coach at the time, Jeff Reese, knocks on my door and says, “Nigel, what happened out here?’ And I get up and look and there’s plastic and all kinds of glass and the machine on the floor with a blinking red light.

“Torts comes out and he says, “Well, now they gotta get us a new damn copier. And I said, ‘No, Torts, now they gotta get us a new fax machine. The copier’s still broken.’”

The Lighting was primed and ready to claim their second Cup a year ago after posting a remarkable 62-16-4 record, tying a record for regular-season wins and easily finishing first among the NHL’s 31 teams. None that mattered when they were swept by the Tortorella-coached Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round of the post-season in April.

Kirwan, who returns to Manitoba periodically, says the ache of that disastrous series was far worse than a six-game defeat to the Chicago Blackhawks four years ago in the Cup final.

“The better team won (in 2015) and that comes with the territory. But last year, we played so well all season long and there was this expectation to make a real run. So, to come out and get swept in the first round was a shocker, to all of us. That’s the hardest pit I’ve had to go through with this team,” he says.

“As soon as we lost Game 4 in Columbus, I talked to Torts and he was gracious and he knew I was hurting. He’s a pro.”

Despite that major misstep, there’s a lot of joy working for Cooper every day, along with the rest of the staff — assistant coaches Todd Richards, Jeff Halpern, Derek Lalonde and goalie coach Frantz Jean.

“Coop’s great. He’s a lot of fun and one of the brightest hockey coaches I’ve ever been around.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell