Pretty much every season, the Jack Adams Award is given to the coach whose team defied expectations and actually didn’t suck after all.

It’s not every year this happens — Barry Trotz won in 2015-16 by taking an already-good Capitals team from 101 points to 120 — but the vast majority of recent winners have been coaches whose teams hit the PDO button all year.

Which, hey, sometimes that’s worth celebrating, such as with Gerard Gallant’s win last year because it turned out that Vegas team, while punching above its weight, was still an above-average NHL team and no one expected that.

As for the others, well, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Paul MacLean, Patrick Roy, and Bob Hartley didn’t end up lasting too long in their positions, nor that it seems John Tortorella might end up following them down that path this summer. Worth noting, by the way, that Trotz also isn’t with that Capitals team anymore, though for different reasons than job performance.

Which is why Trotz seems to be the clubhouse leader when it comes to Jack Adams expectations. It appears he’s done it again, turning the Islanders into a PDO powerhouse when everyone expected them to be an afterthought. You can make similar arguments for Bill Peters in Calgary (both based on his own rep from Carolina and the Flames’ meh play last season) and Craig Berube in St. Louis (who turned a talented but underperforming team into one of the best in the league basically overnight).

But let’s be honest here: No one in the salary cap era, and maybe no one ever, has done as good of a job with a team for the full season, to this point, as Jon Cooper.

Jon Cooper deserves to be recognized for Tampa’s dominance. (Photo by Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) More

Sometimes — and frankly, more often than not — the best coach is actually the one whose team is the best from the very first day of the season and just continues to be exactly that good for the full 82. That’s not to say every Presidents’ Trophy-winning bench boss should also be the coach of the year. This year, though? That’s pretty much the argument.

The Lightning opened the season with a five-game homestand, won all but one, and outscored opponents 18-10. It got worse for everyone else from there. By the time October ended, they were 8-2-1. November saw them go 10-5-0. They ripped through December at 13-0-1. Had just a 6-4-0 January, then rolled through February at 12-1-2.

That is to say, their worst month of the season saw them put up a pace for 98 points, and it was probably only that bad because it got broken up by the All-Star break and their bye week.

Their offense is the best in the league by a wide margin. Their defense is fourth-best. Power play, No. 1. Penalty kill, same. And of course they may end up breaking the league’s record for most points in a season. Some might grumble and say, y’know, the Canadiens didn’t have the shootout, but they also didn’t have a slew of rules that prevented teams from being too good, and they also played against maybe three other half-decent teams in the entire NHL.

Voters might ding him for having the league’s MVP, the best goaltender on the planet, the reigning Norris winner who will probably be a finalist again this year, and a galaxy of other star players. But isn’t managing talent and dealing with egos one of the things that gets talked about — especially in other sports — with great teams? Have you heard even a peep about problems like that all year? Doing so is certainly easier when you’re winning, but this team has 15 more points than the second-best club in the league, and that club is in the same division as them.

There basically isn’t a meaningful number you can point to that the Lightning aren’t elite in, and even if you have a lot of talent, that’s not easy. Cooper, then, should be the slam-dunk Jack Adams winner. There hasn’t been an easier awards decision in years.

And hey, the Lightning lead the league in all-situations PDO too. That almost feels like pandering to the voters, but you have to respect it.