Derek Lalondes short stint as Lightning coach hit home with the wisecracking buddies who saw his

Derek Lalonde found out a few hours before puck drop in Las Vegas on Dec. 21 that he’d be serving as an NHL head coach for the first time.

Lightning coach Jon Cooper had texted the staff before they left for T-Mobile Arena that he was getting put in COVID-19 protocol, so he’d have to quarantine for a while. He offered a few last-minute instructions to his assistants, including Lalonde.

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And it didn’t take long before Lalonde’s buddies started to ease the nerves by sending barbs, directed especially toward’s the 49-year-old’s wardrobe.

“I hope the TV cameras weren’t on him a lot,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill quipped.

You see, Lalonde, hired to Cooper’s staff in 2018, is great at many things. His outgoing personality and self-deprecating humor help him connect with Lightning players, as he often starts each speech with a joke. He’s not shy when it comes to ribbing buddies from back home in Brasher Falls, N.Y, a town of about 1,000. He’s got skills at pickleball, Wiffle ball and board games, not to mention breaking down an opponent’s power play.

“But no one is going to confuse him for a GQ model,” friend Chadd Cassidy said.

So Genest and others started hammering Lalonde with one-liners that afternoon, starting with the sweaters he often wears, which are straight from the Keaton family in “Family Ties.” “He wears them so he doesn’t spill on his shirt,” long-time buddy JP Genest said. They poked fun at Lalonde’s old-man shoes, how his ties and socks often mismatch. Lalonde can take it, as the short-and-stocky, bald coach notes his resemblance to Uncle Fester from “The Addams Family.” He’ll tell players that he was a Division III goalie back in the day, but he’s still got issues skating crossing over to his left.

But the best wisecrack was offered by Cooper, who watched the Lightning getting pummeled and thoroughly outshot by Vegas in the first period and sent Lalonde this text:

“Well,” Cooper said. “The guys must not like you.”

The line made the rest of the Lightning’s staff crack up. They settled down. So did the team, as Tampa Bay rallied for a 4-3 victory over the Golden Knights. Lalonde didn’t know it at the time, but it was his first official win as NHL coach. Captain Steven Stamkos presented Lalonde with a game puck in the dressing room after, joking it wasn’t “how he envisioned.” It didn’t matter that Lalonde got chided by mentor Bob Daniels of Ferris State for pouncing onto the ice and shaking hands with the Golden Knights postgame. It didn’t matter Lalonde didn’t have the perfect pocket square. After it all settled down, he pulled out his iPhone, which had blown up with messages like it did after each of the Lightning’s last two Stanley Cup wins, and sent a mic drop to his buddies, including Blashill.

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“Easy league.”

“He knows exactly who he is,” Cassidy said. “And he’s never deviated off his path.”

That unlikely path took Lalonde from a small town and a home that still has a rotary phone to the pinnacle of the NHL. It’s been far from a one-man show on the Tampa Bay bench as the team won its first two games without Cooper, including a 5-4 overtime victory Tuesday night against the Canadiens. This is the most collaborative and inclusive staff that Cooper has had in his decade leading the Lightning. Long-time NHL center Jeff Halpern runs the power play. Rob Zettler, a former NHLer and AHL coach, handles the blue line. Frantz Jean has guided Vezina Trophy-caliber goalies Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Brian Garlock and Nigel Kirwan are the MVPs behind the scenes as video coaches. Cooper invited his whole staff to be part of his Cup-clinching press conference each of the last two years.

That’s why it meant so much to Lalonde, who has known Cooper for a couple of decades since their Champion’s League days, to get the nod.

“Did he ever dream that Stamkos would hand him a puck postgame? Probably not,” Genest said. “But I don’t think he’s ever dreamed of the ride he’s had, his success both college and pro. His family loves it in Tampa. It’s a tough road to go from the USHL to AHL to here. But it’s the perfect fit with ‘Coop,’ with their relationship. I bet no one was prouder than Coop.

“(Lalonde) is the yin to Coop’s yang.”

Lalonde grew up in the tiny town of Brasher Falls, in the northern part of New York.

His mother, Donna, was the community hairdresser and his father, Jean Jacques (aka “Jack”), worked at the New York Power Authority docks.

The town has a couple of stoplights, a bar (Riverview Bar and Restaurant) and not much else. Lalonde’s parents, until recently, still had a rotary phone at his childhood home.

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“A slower life,” Lalonde says.

Lalonde played three sports, with his high school hockey coach Mickey Locke noticing how cerebral he was about the game. Analytical. Mature beyond his years. But Lalonde was also … um … creative, leading the team in a prank at its end-of-year spaghetti dinner. They moved the coach’s stash of beer from the garage (left over from the golf course he ran) to an assistant coach’s house.

“His interpersonal relationships are exceptional,” Mickey said. “He knows how to connect with people.”

Lalonde played college hockey at Cortland State, earning team MVP honors as a senior. He was on a team with current Providence (and Team USA world junior coach) Nate Leaman and Cassidy, who was the Sabres’ AHL Rochester coach. They became his best friends and support group. But it was also at Cortland where he first started coaching as an assistant to Al MacCormack, who quickly saw how Lalonde built trust with the players and how honest he was.

“One thing I always say as a head coach: ‘If two people agree, I only need one,'” MacCormack said. “You need someone to push back, and he did. There were times he told me,  ‘You need to calm down. He’s a first year guy.’ When (Lalonde) left, there was not a player on the team that wasn’t disappointed.”

Lalonde got a big break when he got picked to join Daniels’ staff at Ferris State, replacing Blashill. Daniels needed someone who could help him recruit against the likes of Michigan, Michigan State and other big programs. It wasn’t a coincidence that the first year Lalonde was there, they won the CCHA league title for the first time.

“He’s not afraid to make fun of himself,” Daniels said. “Coop, I know he’s a task master, he’s demanding. To have a guy like that inject a sense of humor to situations is invaluable.”

Cooper first got connected with Lalonde at Ferris State. Cooper brought his NAHL St. Louis Bandits team up for camps. Cooper, Daniels, Lalonde, Blashill, Garlock and others have formed a “Champion’s League” golf group each summer, with the rule that you need a title to play. There are teams of four, with the highest score on each team for each hole removed. The lowest team score wins the hole, similar to the PGA’s “Skins Game.”

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“(Lalonde) has got the ugliest golf swing I’ve ever seen,” Blashill said.

They all joke about Lalonde’s athletic prowess, or lack thereof, but Cooper saw potential. When Cooper won the Clark Cup in Green Bay (USHL) in 2010, getting him hired by the Lightning to coach in the AHL, he wanted Lalonde to succeed him with the Gamblers.

That was a fork in the road for Lalonde. It was late August, and Lalonde was happy with his role as an assistant at the University of Denver, working under former Lightning assistant George Gwozdecky.

Lalonde and his wife, Melissa, had welcomed their third child, a daughter, a month earlier. It was a hard time for Lalonde to uproot his family. Lalonde told him no in a phone call.

Cooper called back five minutes later.

“He kind of scolded me on my career, where I want to go,” Lalonde recalled. “He said, ‘It’s not about this. It’s about challenging yourself and being better. If you want to be better, you have to be a head coach.’ It meant a lot to me.”

Lalonde didn’t follow Cooper that season, but after Eric Rud left Green Bay the following year for his alma mater Colorado College, he jumped at the second chance. Lalonde took over a Gamblers team that had reached the Clark Cup finals after having won the Cup with Cooper the year prior. Lalonde led them to one of the best records in USHL history (47-9-4), then a franchise points record.

Daniels laughs remembering that he told Lalonde he should stay in college.

‘What do I know?” he quipped.

Daniels was headed for Lalonde’s wedding in Cleveland in May 2004 when he and his wife walked out of the Hilton and saw Lalonde outside.

Playing Whiffle ball.

“My wife turned to me and said, ‘He’s going to get his ass kicked,'” Daniels said.

It was a tradition that Lalonde and his buddies at Cortland started in college. They’d have double-elimination tournaments of three-on-three. There was a pitcher, an infielder and an outfielder. If you hit it on the ground past the infield, it was a single. If you hit in the air and it landed in the outfield, it was a double. And so forth. They’d find a lawn chair to be behind home plate. If you hit the chair with the pitch, it was a strike. If not, a ball.

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Before Lalonde’s wedding, they paid one of the hotel staffers to mow the lawn out back for their game. Lalonde and his friend Mark Tyo were always on the same team, usually with Cassidy. Lalonde’s team made the championship on this particular day, which put them in danger of being late for the ceremony. The limo was waiting as the title game went into extra innings, with Lalonde and Tyo’s team eventually losing. Then they had to rush to the church.

“Him and his mother-in-law had a few choice words that weren’t appropriate for the church,” Cassidy said. “He was literally late to his own wedding. (Lalonde’s) line was, ‘You’ve always got to let them know what they’re getting into. You don’t want to set the expectation too high.'”

“I probably was late,” Lalonde said. “I’d like to think I was right on time.”

The Lalondes have been happily married for 17 years, with three kids: Alex, 15, Luke 13 and Abby 11. They’ve gotten to celebrate back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. Lalonde finally brought the Cup back to Brasher Falls in July. The first thing Lalonde did was take hockey’s holy grail to the grave of Tyo, who died in 2015 and whose tie he and Leaman wore as inspiration in their career. They went to the local rink, where the line curved around the building.

“You would have thought the president was coming,” Genest said.

Lalonde went by his old high school coach’s golf course, wanting to play at least a hole there with the Cup. He rode atop the one firetruck in town, then took the party back to his parents’ house. They went to the Riverview bar and had pizzas delivered. They tried to finish all the beers they had left at Lalonde’s home.

“We’re all very proud of him now,” said his father, Jack.

Lalonde is passing back the reins to Cooper, as the league’s longest-tenured coach exited protocol Thursday and is expected to return for Thursday’s game against the Panthers in Sunrise. Lalonde’s friends and former colleagues he’s known for a long time, from Genest to Daniels and Gwozdecky, are happy for his brief opportunity, though they joke they don’t want it to get to his head. Lalonde is 2-0 at this point, which should give him some bragging rights in the summer on the golf course or in the bar.

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They still gave Lalonde a healthy ribbing up through Tuesday night, when he wore a traditional black suit and black tie.

Joked Cassidy: “I’m sure it was from Sears.”

(Top photo of Lalonde: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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