The Columbus Blue Jackets have relieved head coach Dean Evason and assistant coach Steve McCarthy of their duties. In Evason’s place, the Blue Jackets have hired veteran head coach Rick Bowness, who last coached with the Winnipeg Jets in the 2023-24 season.
Evason will become the first head coach to lose his chair this season. His ousting comes right after Columbus snapped a four-game losing streak with an overtime win against the Utah Mammoth on Sunday. Despite the three-goal performance, the Blue Jackets’ brass will opt for a change. Columbus ranks dead-last in the Eastern Conference this season with a 19-19-7 record. That record is better than four Western Conference teams.
Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell said on the firing:
This season has been a frustrating one for all of us and the bottom line is we are not performing at a level that meets our expectations… Dean did a tremendous job last year under extremely difficult circumstances and I thank him for that. I also want to thank Steve for his commitment to our club over the past five years.
Columbus hired Evason in July 2024 to replace rookie, interim head-coach Pascal Vincent after they were unable to bring on veteran coach Mike Babcock. Evason joined Columbus just two months after the GM chair was turned over to Waddell. The two inherited a Blue Jackets club that posted a dismal 27-43-12 record, scored the eighth-fewest goals, and allowed the second-most in the 2023-24 season.
New management faced an incredibly difficult task, made unimaginably worse by the passing of star winger Johnny Gaudreau in the months leading up to the 2024-25 season.
The Blue Jackets’ 2024-25 campaign seemed off to another rough start until a mid-season surge pushed them up the standings. Columbus posted a 10-3-1 record in the month of January, spurred by veteran Sean Monahan and a breakout from winger Kirill Marchenko. The club ended the season with a commendable 40-33-9 record, though they ultimately missed out on the playoffs by just one win.
That one win was the margin of error headed into the 2025-26 campaign. Even with the standout performances from Russian wingers Marchenko and Dmitri Voronkov, and a bit more reliability in net, the Blue Jackets have fallen well under their mark this season. The club seems well positioned for yet another top pick, a seemingly moot success for a lineup already younger than the NHL average. Much more important would be a return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which Columbus hasn’t seen since 2020.
With that motivation, the club will oust the rough-and-tumble Evason as well as assistant McCarthy, who has been on Columbus’ bench since 2021 and served on the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters bench for another five years. McCarthy, a former pro defenseman, was in charge of Columbus’ blue-line – which has finished in the bottom-seven for goals-allowed in every season under his helm.
The Blue Jackets will move forward under the lead of veteran Bowness, who brings over 40 years of coaching experience to Ohio. Bowness led the Jets to the postseason in both of his two years with the club, though lost in the first round both times. That was the same result he faced in his last of two-and-a-half years with the Dallas Stars – a tenure that kciked off with Bowness leading the Stars to the 2020 Stanley Cup Finals after being hired partway through the year.
Prior to his time in Dallas, Bowness was a career associate head coach, having spent five years in Tampa Bay, seven years in Vancouver, and seven years in Phoenix in addition to other roles. His last head coaching experience prior to 2020 was all the way back in 2003-04, when he led the Coyotes to a 2-12-3-3 record as an interim head coach. Before then, he served as the New York Islanders’ interim from 1997 to 1998, combining for a 38-50-12 record. Bowness has made two trips to the Stanley Cup Finals in his coaching career but didn’t take home the Cup.
Prior to his coaching days, Bowness was a hard-nosed bruiser in the minor-leagues, where he twice won the CHL Championship before minor-leagues merged into the modern AHL. He appeared in 173 NHL games over the course of an eight-year pro career and racked up 55 points and 191 penalty minutes.
Wow, I did not see that coming… very strange decision. Evason had them playing great last year but they don’t have the roster to be a playoff team IMO. Not sure what the logic is here…
I mean bluejacket fell off last year they were good and now they drop I’m not surprise bowness might be good hire
They’ve given away a lot of leads late in the game this year – to the point I’m sure it gets hard to watch
Don’t follow them closely but curious on how the players take this change. I would have presumed there was some level of trust / closeness given everything the team fought through last year. I get that it’s still based on results but wonder if it might have the opposite effect on morale.
I like it
Waddell needs to go himself.
Best scowl in hockey. Evason genuinely seems pissed off by something every second of every game.
Suprised Bones wanted to coach again. Guess it’s in his DNA.
@Gbear — Hopefully, this means his wife’s health has improved, too. So far, I can’t find any current info to the contrary.
The old school, Rough, And tumble coaching approach dosen’t work anymore.
when a tree falls in the forest.. does anyone hear it ? guess it’s time to bring in the next retread .. already burned the tort’s bridge .. keeping the GM makes zero sense .. but it’s what the jackets do
So your theory is that no guy should ever get multiple opportunities to be an NHL head coach? This makes him a retread? Based on your strategy, Paul Maurice, Bruce Cassidy, Craig Berube, Barry Trotz, Mike Sullivan, and Joel Quenneville, recent Cup winners, would never have had a chance to lead teams to a championship.
Waddell is more the problem, he has never anything very positive in Atlanta or Carolina. Always a do nothing GM. Tully was the brains in Carolina.