Jeff Blashill’s three years with Jon Cooper taught him how to coach Blackhawks with ‘real confidence’

Lightning coach Jon Cooper, one of the best and quirkiest coaches in the NHL, no longer calls the Blackhawks by their official name.

Since his best friend Jeff Blashill’s hiring in May, they have become the ‘‘Blash-hawks’’ in Cooper’s world, and he tolerates nothing else. Any reporter who dares pronounce it differently promptly is corrected.

Anyone who dares to doubt Blashill and his ‘‘Blash-hawks’’ promptly would be corrected, too. Cooper has immense confidence in the man picked to lead the Hawks out of their rebuilding stage, and he isn’t surprised by their surprising early-season success, which continued in a 3-2 road victory Thursday against Cooper and the Lightning.

‘‘I’ve said all along, he’s one of the premier coaches in the league,’’ Cooper said Wednesday. ‘‘And I think he’s proving it now.’’

Blashill and Cooper first met around 2000 while coaching in Michigan, and they hit it off. In the last quarter-century, they’ve become tight. And for the last three seasons, they teamed up together with the Lightning.

That gave Cooper an extremely qualified assistant on staff and gave Blashill an opportunity to take a self-described reset and a deep breath after seven fruitless seasons as the Red Wings’ head coach.

‘‘In coaching, you go through [it] and you lose sight of certain things,’’ said Blashill, now 51. ‘‘When you get a chance to sit back and watch others do it, which I did here, it’s a reminder of what you did good and maybe [of] some different things to learn.’’

Lightning lessons

Former Hawks forward Brandon Hagel, who has exploded into a 90-point star since being traded, was one of many Lightning players who developed a relationship with Blashill during his tenure in Tampa.

Their relationship became something unique for a player and coach.

‘‘He was the type of coach that you could . . . I don’t want to say ‘argue with,’ but you could put your own two cents in,’’ Hagel said. ‘‘He would listen to you and disagree or agree with you. Being able to have a conversation instead of just being a yes-man, that’s why [his approach] helps with a lot of young kids. Because when you’re younger, you just say, ‘Yes, OK,’ and go do it. That’s all you’re focused on. Whereas he’s someone you can walk up to and have that conversation.

‘‘He always came to the rink to work, and you knew that. If he had to tell you something or get mad at you, it was work. But when he left the rink, you could approach him, have a beer with him, call him, interact with him. And I really appreciated that.’’

Blashill seconded Hagel’s description of their connection and praised him for helping make him a better coach. But he clarified it was Cooper who taught him to prioritize player relationships to that degree.

‘‘[Jon] did a really good job of delegating and utilizing his staff,’’ Blashill said. ‘‘It allowed him to focus on what’s most important, and that’s the relationships and communication with the players.

‘‘It was a reminder to me that you can have all the X’s and O’s you want, but our No. 1 job is to get the most out of our players. And the way to do that, ultimately, is to build relationships, hold them accountable and be in the fight with them.’’

Another thing Blashill learned from Cooper was anger management. He admits that, as a younger man, he didn’t always control his ‘‘Irish temper’’ in the healthiest way. Now he knows how to do so.

‘‘Jon does a good job of holding his temper and being calm in [big] moments,’’ Blashill said. ‘‘It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a temper and it doesn’t mean he isn’t a fighter because I think he is both those things. But his first reaction is to be calm and think it through.’’

Their influence on each other was a two-way street, too. Cooper was struck by Blashill’s eagerness to dive into nitty-gritty details and data, which eventually showed Cooper which often-overlooked things were worth looking at.

‘‘One thing about Jeff is his [attention to] detail is unlike many I’ve seen before,’’ Cooper said. ‘‘He’s extremely astute in that department.’’

New heights

After Blashill landed the Hawks’ job, his wife, Erica, decided to stay in Tampa so as not to uproot their daughter entering her senior year of high school. (They also have two sons, one in college at Ole Miss and one in high school.)

Blashill conceded the long distance from his family this season ‘‘isn’t the easiest thing.’’ But he made a vow to himself to appreciate and savor every day as an NHL head coach more this time than he did during his first experience in Detroit.

On a long-awaited walk Tuesday with Erica, he told her he so far has succeeded in doing so.

‘‘I’m really enjoying our players, our staff, our management group,’’ Blashill said. ‘‘It’s a fun journey. The journey can get stressful and there’s a lot of pressure, but it still should be fun.’’

As a head coach, he isn’t able to work one-on-one with players quite as much as he could as an assistant, although he tried to chat with every Hawks player at least once during the summer to establish some rapport before training camp.

His willingness to have conversations with players about on-ice situations, however, hasn’t changed.

‘‘He’s very open with trying to help players learn,’’ defenseman Wyatt Kaiser said. ‘‘He tells you: ‘Hey, we’re going to go over something. It’s not because I don’t like you, it’s just constructive criticism. I want to push you. I want you to grow.’

‘‘You can talk hockey through with him. He gets that it’s not black-and-white; there are gray areas. . . . He’ll say, ‘I think you should do this play for these reasons.’ And you can be like, ‘Well, what do you think about this?’ There’s a lot of back-and-forth with ideas.’’

It will take some time to fully evaluate Blashill’s impact on the Hawks, despite the encouraging early indications. It will take even longer for him to become considered one of the NHL’s premier coaches, as Cooper believes he is.

Nonetheless, Blashill seems to believe he can be, too.

It’s common for NHL coaches to have more success in their second or third jobs, and Blashill sought advice during the summer from several guys who fit that category. He thinks his accumulated experience has positioned him to take his career to new heights with the Hawks.

‘‘When you first come in the league, you think you might know what’s right,’’ he said. ‘‘After being in the league a long time, seeing a lot of really good players and really good teams, I know what’s right.

‘‘[We] have a lot of conviction in what our process is going to be. That experience allows you that conviction. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be right about everything; I get that. But we certainly have a strong belief in how we want to do things. . . . You can have real confidence when you’ve been through the league.’’