The Tampa Bay Lightning have added an assistant coach to the mix, hiring Rob Zettler to join Jon Cooper’s staff. General manager Julien Brisebois released a short statement about the hire:
Rob brings extensive coaching experience to the Lightning organization and is very familiar with a lot of our players and coaches. We believe our players will benefit from Rob’s wealth of experience, both as a long-time NHL defenseman and as a veteran coach in the NHL.
Zettler, who may be best remembered as an in-your-face defenseman that played nearly 600 NHL games for several different organizations, has been an assistant coach with the San Jose Sharks and Toronto Maple Leafs previously. He also served, notably for this position, as the head coach of the Syracuse Crunch as recently as 2016. The Crunch of course is the AHL affiliate of Tampa Bay and where Cooper cut his teeth before taking over the Lightning.
In fact, Zettler took over as head coach of the Crunch from Cooper when the latter was promoted to the job in Tampa Bay during the 2012-13 season. That team, which had been 39-18-8 when Cooper was bumped up, went all the way to the Calder Cup Finals under Zettler, eventually losing despite the efforts of young Ondrej Palat and Tyler Johnson.
That familiarity and experience will come in handy for Zettler as he joins the NHL staff.