TORONTO, ONT – Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper took exception to the Columbus Blue Jackets being referred to as “a blue-collar” team.“Is that a positive or a negative?” Cooper said Monday, a day before his Eastern Conference second-seeded Lightning open the first round of the NHL playoffs against the seventh-seeded Blue Jackets. “If blue-collar means a hard-working team, they are.
But they don’t have blue-collar talent,” he added. “They have blue-chip talent.”Cooper and the Lightning know just how good the Blue Jackets are in a rematch of last season’s first-round series in which Columbus swept the Presidents' Trophy winners in four games. “What happened last year, happened last year.