Nigel Kirwan’s 30 Years With The Tampa Bay Lightning Have Been ‘More About The People’

Prior to the 1996-97 season, the first for the Tampa Bay Lightning in what is now Amalie Arena, Terry Crisp walked into Nigel Kirwan’s office and asked him to become his video coach.

Kirwan, who joined the Lightning as a sales and marketing representative four months before the team raised the curtain on its inaugural season of 1992-93, thought Crisp was kidding. After all, the team’s first coach was often joking and pulling pranks around the office.

“He was a big practical joker and I did not believe him for a second,” said Kirwan. “I didn’t think I was qualified and I literally told him take a hike, though I used worse language than that. I had a marketing report due and I didn’t have time for a prank.”

Crisp was not joking.

“I was looking for somebody to come on board and help me out with some videos and a little bit of the coaching because we didn’t have anybody that could do that,” said Crisp, who spent five-plus seasons behind the Tampa Bay bench before enjoying a 23-year career in the Nashville Predators’ broadcast booth. “Nigel knew hockey. He was exactly what I was looking for. He took over the reins and ran with it. The rest is history.”

That history is reflected in a 26-year timeline as a Lightning video coach following his stint in sales and marketing.

“I wasn’t interested in a career change,” said Kirwan, who, thinking it was part of a Crispy gag, signed a contract thrown in front of him by a front office staffer. “I was fine with what I was doing. Then I realized, ‘Wow, I really am the video coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning.’”

The Jamaican-born Kirwan, son to Novelle and Marguerite and one of three siblings, had the hockey background Crisp desired. His family, after spending a year in the Bahamas, moved to Winnipeg when he was two. They relocated to North Dakota when Kirwan was in the second grade, though at the beginning of fourth grade he returned to Winnipeg to board and play hockey at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School, an institution that dates to the early 19^th century. Alumni includes former NHL defenseman and current Lightning broadcaster Brian Engblom.

Kirwan’s family moved to Tampa when he was 14. Instead of heading south to the Sunshine State upon graduating St. John’s-Ravenscourt, he went east to attend the University of Western Ontario. Ultimately, Kirwan joined his family and attended the University of Tampa, where he graduated and where the seeds of his career were planted.

One of his classmates at UT wore Tampa Bay Buccaneers apparel virtually every day. Late one semester, Kirwan introduced himself and inquired about his classmate’s devotion to the NFL team, which then trained on campus.

“There were times that I probably looked like a big orange rolling around campus,” said the classmate, Matt DiBernardo. “People talked to me about the Bucs all of the time. Yet, there was something about Nigel. He gave off such an impression that I wanted to do something for him.”

Kirwan and DiBernardo, who was interning with the Bucs and helping with equipment, struck a friendship that endures to this day. The next semester, DiBernardo asked Kirwan if he could be a ball boy for an upcoming game against the San Francisco 49ers, who were quarterbacked by Joe Montana.

“I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’” recalls Kirwan. “I was 20 years old and who wouldn’t want to be on the sideline for an NFL game, especially one with Joe Montana.”

One game became four and Kirwan was asked by the equipment manager if he could help clean helmets, do laundry and other such chores. He spent three seasons as a part-time equipment assistant while serving as a ball boy on game days.

“Once he got in with the Bucs, even though we were the low guys on the totem pole, Nigel developed relationships right away,” said DiBernardo, who coached football collegiately at, among other places, Delaware Valley College and Wilkes University in Pennsylvania before returning to Florida to coach high school football in Gainesville.

While Kirwan was working with the Bucs, the NHL announced it was expanding to Tampa for the 1992-93 season. After the team set up shop, somebody with the Bucs connected Kirwan to a friend who was with the Lightning. He interviewed, and a career with the NHL franchise was launched.

“I wanted to go in a completely different direction,” said Kirwan, who as a USA Hockey certified coach has taught the game to countless youths while certifying those with coaching ambitions. “I was trying to be a financial planner. I was also thinking about a career in the FBI.”

Instead, he launched a career with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

“I cringe when I think that it has been 30 years,” said Kirwan, whose international experience includes serving as Team USA’s video coach at the World Championships (twice under former Lightning coach John Tortorella) and the World Cup of Hockey. “At the same time, it has been really cool to be part of the rollercoaster ride that has been the Tampa Bay Lightning. To watch it start with (founder) Phil Esposito getting us off the ground is really cool to look back on.”

There were times during his four years as a sales rep that Kirwan did something that did not seem so cool: he toted around shoeboxes full of tickets he often could not give away. Still, he loved hockey and he loved what he was doing.

After joining Crisp’s staff, Kirwan often had to be resourceful at a time before cell phones and laptops. There were several occasions he asked a hotel manager or bartender to tape games. Many times, VHS game tapes had to packaged and sent by FedEx. Whatever it took.

“It was very difficult to get video back then compared to now when you can download a game on a laptop,” he said.

Cooperation among teams was imperative, even if it meant hiding game tapes in ceiling tiles while on the road in the visiting team’s office.

“If we played a game and a team was coming in on a back-to-back, they would ask me if I could get a copy of the game for them,” Kirwan recalled. “I would usually record the game on an extra VCR; we always had to have an extra VCR. I would then hide the tape in the ceiling tiles. We would go on to our next destination and when the next team arrived where we just played, their video guy would go into the ceiling tiles and grab the game tape.”

My, how things have changed. That includes the speed with which video can be presented and disseminated.

“In the beginning, you couldn’t do a lot, but it took you a really long time to do what you needed to do,” said Kirwan, who, in working with video coordinator Brian Garlock, provides coaches and players with clips of, among other things, upcoming opponents and special teams. “Now, you can do a lot more so quickly, but you get asked to do a lot more. The hours of work have actually increased because of the access to so much data.”

What has not changed are the friendships and relationships. When considering the number of flights, bus rides, games and meals during the course of a season, players, coaches and staff members spend plenty of time with each other.

Having debuted with the Lightning in 2008-09, Steven Stamkos is the longest-serving player on the team. He and Kirwan have experienced a lot in 15 seasons.

“He’s seen it all and we kind of joke and call him the “mayor” around here,” said Stamkos. “He is a great person who, first and foremost, understands the relationship balance between being on the coaching staff and still being able to interact with the players. He’s a great human being, always thinking of others first. Nigel is synonymous with the Tampa Bay logo in this area. So many people know him and respect him.”

Thinking of others first. Whether it is a player, a coach or whomever, that characteristic is synonymous with Kirwan.

“He’s been with the company since day one,” said Jon Cooper, who has spent the past decade behind the Tampa Bay bench. “That’s a testament to the type of person he is. One thing about Nigel, he cares about everybody else. He always puts other people before himself.”

It is the relationships Kirwan, who enjoys saltwater fishing and golf, cherishes most. Sure, it is great to have his name on the Stanley Cup three times and to be part of championship teams and many memorable moments. Yet, their value would be diminished if not for the relationships.

“The Stanley Cup victories are awesome and I have been so lucky and blessed to be a part of them,” he said. “I think when I look back on this, when I am distanced from it, it will be more about the people. The players, the coaches, the executives, all the relationships that I really try hard to maintain.”

Two games in Lightning history stand out. The Cup-clinching Game 7 at home against the Calgary Flames in 2004 for the team’s first title, and the Lightning’s inaugural game on October 7, 1992 against the Chicago Blackhawks at Expo Hall, on the Florida State Fairgrounds.

“The building literally shook and I thought it was going to collapse on us,” said Kirwan, of that first game when Chris Kontos scored four goals in a 7-3 win. “At that point, I was a newbie. I was hired only four months earlier and I had no idea what I was doing.”

Nobody had any idea how things would play out during the 2020 playoffs in the bubbles of Toronto and Edmonton five months after a virus-shortened regular season. The Lightning prevailed in an unpredictable and difficult time, one when the word “team” was never more meaningful.

“It was just us together celebrating in the locker room in Edmonton,” said Kirwan. “Everybody that was in that journey together, from the hotel to the planes to the ice, it was just players, coaches and trainers as opposed to hundreds of family members and friends crammed into a locker room. It was a cherished time, and when you go through so much together, things like the bubble really bring people closer.”

There will be more seasons, more memories and more friendships. To think it all started with Kirwan approaching DiBernardo during their days at UT.

“It led to all of this,” he said. “It’s been a hell of a ride.”