Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper had plenty to say after his team’s 4-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday.
With less than a minute left, it looked like Nikita Kucherov had tied the game, until officials waved off the goal, ruling that Brandon Hagel had batted the puck with his hand earlier in the play. The reversal didn’t sit well with Cooper, who let the referees hear it.
Tampa Bay HC Jon Cooper Sounds Off on the Overturned Goal
League officials triggered a closer look at the play under Rule 38. It is a standard that demands clear and indisputable video evidence to change an on-ice ruling.
After reviewing the sequence, they determined Brandon Hagel had intentionally directed the puck with his hand to Guentzel only 13 seconds before Kucherov scored. Because Rule 79 nullifies a goal from a deliberate hand pass. So, Tampa Bay’s tally was overturned.
Cooper firmly disagreed. “Did Brandon Hagel direct that puck, knowing exactly where it was going? No. Would you sit here today and say Brandon Hagel was maybe protecting his face from a puck hitting it, or protecting some part of his body?”
Jon Cooper and the Lightning found Nikita Kucherov’s overturned goal “laughable” after it was ruled that Brandon Hagel used his hand to pass the puck on the same play.
Did the officials make the right call, or is Cooper speaking the truth? ⤵️
(🎥: @nhl, @jayrecher) pic.twitter.com/qFZFAxYSxA
— BarDown (@BarDown) December 5, 2025
He continued with an analogy, saying that if someone threw a microphone at another person, the natural reaction would be to put their hand up to block it. That, he argued, is the real spirit of the rule: players instinctively protect themselves.
He insisted Hagel wasn’t supposed to just take the puck to the face and stressed that Hagel didn’t intentionally direct anything. It was a quick, chaotic play with bodies everywhere, a sequence that continued to develop until the puck eventually found its way into the net.
Cooper didn’t hold back on his frustration: “So is that a really frustrating one for me? It is. I think you read the rule book, which we did, and then you try and dissect what happened in the play, and then you take it all into consideration. It’s laughable that got overturned, but in the end, it did, so can’t cry over that.“
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He also criticized the league’s video review system, calling video replay a problem because every angle gets dissected. He argued that situations turn into judgment calls, and in the eyes of the players on the ice, the play was not a hand pass. Instead, the final decision came from someone reviewing the footage in another city, far from Florida, which he said can be especially “frustrating”.
Despite the tough loss, the Lightning still sit atop the Atlantic Division and will look to bounce back Saturday against the Islanders.
