Lightning's Jon Cooper Wins 2026 Jack Adams Award as NHL's Best Coach Over Lindy Ruff, Dan Muse

Jon Cooper is being celebrated as the NHL's top coach after leading the Tampa Bay Lightning to a ninth straight playoff berth.

Cooper was named the 2025-26 Jack Adams Award winner Wednesday by the NHL.

The Jack Adams is awarded annually "to the coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team's success" as voted on by the NHL Broadcasters' Association.

Cooper earned the trophy over the Pittsburgh Penguins' Dan Muse and Buffalo Sabres' Lindy Ruff after leading the Lightning to a 50-26-6 record during his 13th season with the team.

He earned his 600th career win in January in just his 1,005th game coached, ranking him behind only Scotty Bowman as the fastest to the milestone in NHL history.

The Lightning returned to the playoffs despite losing star defenseman Victor Hedman down the stretch of the season in part thanks to stellar performances from Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Vasilevskiy tied his career second-best mark with 39 wins in net, while Kucherov put up the second-highest points total of his career with 130 points in 76 games.

The Lightning also remained one of the most dangerous even-strength teams in the NHL in their 13th full season under Cooper. Cooper's team ranked second only to the Colorado Avalanche with 2.95 goals per 60 minutes at 5v5, per MoneyPuck.

Cooper has marked a regular-season record of 622-332-89 (.639 points percentage) in 14 seasons as head coach, as well as a 162-91-71 postseason record highlighted by back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021.

Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois said after his team's first-round elimination by the Montreal Canadiens that Cooper was "going to be here for a while."

The Lightning will hope keeping the winningest coach in franchise history will give Vasilevskiy, Kucherov and Hedman their best shot at putting together another deep playoff run in the near future.

Cooper, a three-time finalist, is the first Lightning coach since John Tortorella in 2004 to win the Jack Adams Award.

Muse finished as a runner-up after capping off his first year as head coach with the Penguins' first playoff appearance in four years. Ruff earned a finalist spot by snapping the longest postseason drought in the NHL and taking the Sabres to their first playoff berth since 2011.