Blue Jackets Fire Dean Evason, Steve McCarthy; Hire Rick Bowness
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.
Snapshots: Demko, Nelson, Pesce
The Canucks have managed a split through the first four games of their series against Edmonton despite being without their starting goalie. However, it appears that there’s a chance that Thatcher Demko will hit the ice at some point this round. Speaking with reporters today (video link), head coach Rick Tocchet stated that his netminder has “improved immensely the last 72 hours” although he didn’t go as far as confirming that Demko would suit up in the coming days. However, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK and The Athletic adds (Twitter link) that a return in Game Six or Seven is a possibility for Demko. The 28-year-old posted a career-best .918 SV% in 51 starts during the regular season and was expected to be a big part of their playoff run before suffering a knee injury in the first game of the first round versus Nashville.
More from around the NHL:
- The Jets are among the teams looking for a new head coach following the retirement of Rick Bowness. In the latest 32 Thoughts podcast (audio link), Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman suggested that some believe Todd Nelson could be a viable candidate to take over behind the bench in Winnipeg. Nelson doesn’t have much experience as a head coach in the NHL (just 51 games with Edmonton in 2014-15) but is a very experienced coach. He has been an assistant at the top level with Atlanta and Dallas (spanning six years combined) and is in his tenth season as an AHL head coach; he currently is with Hershey who led the league with 111 points during the regular season.
- Hurricanes defenseman Brett Pesce returned to practice today as he works his way back from a lower-body injury, notes team reporter Walt Ruff. The 29-year-old has been out since being injured in the second game of the playoffs and consistently logs big minutes for Carolina while helping to anchor their penalty kill. While Pesce skated today, head coach Rod Brind’Amour indicated that they’re still operating under the expectation that he won’t be back this round but would consider putting him in if he was cleared to return in this series.
Rick Bowness Announces Retirement
Jets head coach Rick Bowness is expected to announce his retirement later today, TSN’s Darren Dreger reports. Winnipeg promptly released a statement confirming the news.
Bowness, 69, had mulled retirement two seasons ago after the Stars announced he wouldn’t be returning as their bench boss, but he was offered a two-year agreement with a one-year club option from the Jets to stay in the game. Speaking to reporters last week, Bowness said the team hadn’t yet decided on whether or not to exercise its option and needed to talk with his family and the team about his future.
After a 40-year career behind NHL benches as a head coach and assistant, Bowness was named a finalist for the Jack Adams Award for the first time last week. He guided Winnipeg to a second-place finish in the Central Division this season with 110 points and 52 wins, the latter of which tied for the most in Jets/Thrashers franchise history.
Bowness began his time in the NHL as a player. After being selected in the second round of the 1975 NHL Amateur Draft by the Atlanta Flames, Bowness made his NHL debut the following season. The right winger didn’t establish himself as an everyday NHLer until a move to the Red Wings in 1977, who acquired him for cash that summer. He played a career-high 61 games that season before spending the next three seasons as a major-league/minor-league tweener with the Blues and Jets organization, last suiting up in the NHL for the previous incarnation of Winnipeg with 25 points in 45 games in the 1980-81 campaign.
Still playing in the Jets organization, Bowness began his career in coaching as a player-coach for AHL Sherbrooke in 1982-83. He didn’t coach the team during his final season as a player with Sherbrooke in 1983-84 but took a job as an NHL assistant with the Jets immediately after retiring. He remained in an assistant role in Winnipeg until 1987 when the organization reassigned him to the minors to become the head coach of their new AHL affiliate in Moncton. A year and a half later, Bowness was back in the NHL – this time getting his first shot as a head coach in the majors. He was the interim boss for the back half of the 1988-89 campaign after Winnipeg fired Dan Maloney midseason. It wasn’t terribly successful, though, and he wasn’t brought back after finishing the season with an 8-17-3 record.
Bowness immediately landed with the Bruins organization and spent the following three seasons there — two as the head coach of AHL Maine and one as Boston’s head coach. He guided the team to a 36-32-12 record in 1991-92 and a Conference Final loss to the Penguins, the eventual Stanley Cup champions.
In the summer of 1992, he headed to the expansion Senators to serve as the first coach in franchise history. Nobody could have bolstered one of the most poorly assembled rosters in league history, though, and Bowness led the struggling franchise to a 39-178-18 record (.204 points percentage) before being let go midway through his fourth season in Canada’s capital.
Bowness spent the next 20-plus years working for the Islanders, Coyotes, Canucks, Lightning and Stars, mainly serving as an assistant or associate. He was briefly the head coach of the Isles for a time in 1997 and 1998 and served as the interim bench boss for the Coyotes in 2003-04 for the final 20 games of the season.
After going 2-12-3-3 down the stretch with Phoenix, Bowness wouldn’t get another try as a head coach for another 15 years. He took over as interim for Dallas midway through the 2019-20 campaign after Jim Montgomery was dismissed due to unprofessional conduct, later revealed to be an alcohol-related incident that led Montgomery to seek treatment for alcoholism and eventually return behind the bench for the Bruins last year. Going 20-13-5 until COVID paused the season, Bowness returned in the bubble playoffs and oversaw the Stars’ first appearance in the Stanley Cup Final in 20 years.
Dallas fell to the Lightning and missed the playoffs the following shortened season but returned to postseason play under Bowness in 2022. After going 46-30-6 and losing in the first round to the Flames, though, the Stars and Bowness mutually parted ways, paving the way for him to return to where his coaching career started in Winnipeg.
Bowness ended his career on a high note, posting a 98-57-9 record and guiding the Jets to back-to-back playoff appearances, even though they both resulted in quick first-round exits. He officially exits the game after 38 seasons behind an NHL bench, with parts of 14 coming as a head coach. His career record stands at 310-408-48-37 in 803 games, a .439 points percentage.
Winnipeg now becomes the seventh team with an active head coach vacancy. No candidates have been linked to the job yet.
PHR wishes Bowness and his family all the best in retirement and congratulations him on one of the lengthiest coaching careers in league history.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
NHL Announces Finalists For 2024 Jack Adams Award
The Jets’ Rick Bowness, the Predators’ Andrew Brunette and the Canucks’ Rick Tocchet are this year’s finalists for the Jack Adams Award, the league announced Friday. The honor is given to the head coach who “contributed the most to his team’s success.”
We’ll have a first-time winner for the fifth year in a row. Last year’s recipient was Bruins bench boss Jim Montgomery, who led Boston to the best regular season in league history (.823 points percentage) since the Canadiens’ 60-8-12 (.825 points percentage) run in 1976-77.
Bowness, 69, is by far the most veteran option among the finalists. A good portion of his 30-plus years behind an NHL bench has been spent as an assistant, but he’s still managed 310 wins and 803 regular-season games coached as a head coach. After guiding Winnipeg to only its second 100-point season in franchise history with a 52-24-6 record, Bowness is the first Jets/Thrashers coach to be nominated for the Jack Adams in franchise history.
Brunette is also gunning for his first Coach of the Year honor despite holding less than two full seasons as a head coach. Both have yielded great results, though, guiding the Panthers to the 2022 Presidents’ Trophy after taking over for John Quenneville early in the season. He was back in a head coaching role this year, taking over behind the Predators’ bench and guiding what many viewed to be a fringe team to a 99-point season, including a franchise-record 18-game point streak from Feb. 17 to March 26. Nashville’s 47-30-5 record placed them in the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference, returning to postseason play after missing out in 2023.
The 60-year-old Tocchet rightfully gets a nod here in his first full season as head coach of the Canucks. Vancouver was arguably the league’s most surprising team this season, especially considering their level of dominance. They weren’t just a playoff team like some had hoped for at the beginning of the year – they were one of the best in the league for long stretches, finishing with a 50-23-9 record and their first division title in 11 years. The Canucks’ 109 points were their most since hitting 111 in the 2011-12 campaign.
Jets Notes: Bowness, Monahan, Dillon, Barron
The Jets’ second-best regular season in franchise history came to an unceremonious end in the postseason, losing in five games to the Avalanche in the first round. That’s led some to wonder if head coach Rick Bowness will be back for his third season with the team next season.
Speaking to reporters today, Bowness confirmed he has a club option for next season on his contract (via The Athletic’s Murat Ates). Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff hasn’t yet decided whether or not to exercise it, and Bowness said today that he still needs to talk with his family and Jets management about his future.
The 69-year-old was away from the Jets twice this season – once in October after his wife was hospitalized and once near the end of the season after undergoing an undisclosed medical procedure. Associate coach Scott Arniel assumed interim head coaching duties on both occasions.
Under Bowness, the Jets have a 98-57-9 record over the past two seasons and have made the playoffs in consecutive campaigns after missing out in 2022. If he doesn’t return to the club for next season, Winnipeg would become the seventh team with an active vacancy at head coach.
Elsewhere from Winnipeg with their season wrapped up:
- Pending unrestricted free agent center Sean Monahan is open to re-signing, he said today (via the Winnipeg Sun’s Scott Billeck). He told reporters that he “is looking for a place that wants to win,” and his last few months in a Jets uniform evidently satisfied that requirement. Winnipeg picked up the 29-year-old pivot from the Canadiens in early February, parting with their 2024 first-round pick. He gelled well in Manitoba, posting 13 goals and 24 points with a +9 rating in 34 games while locking down the second-line center spot behind Mark Scheifele. Between the Habs and Jets this year, his 59 points in 83 games were his most since his career-best 82-point season with the Flames in 2018-19.
- Another pending Jets UFA interested in sticking around is defenseman Brenden Dillon, who told reporters today he was frustrated with the lack of extension talks in-season (via Billeck). Dillon, 33, signed a four-year, $15.6MM extension with the Capitals in 2020 but was traded to Winnipeg for a pair of draft picks after one season. He’s been a consistently above-average shutdown defender in that time, accumulating 63 points with a +38 rating and 235 PIMs in 238 games with the Jets. He averaged 18:44 per game this season, fourth among Jets defenders behind Josh Morrissey, Dylan DeMelo and Neal Pionk.
- Depth forward Morgan Barron‘s previously undisclosed injury, which kept him out of the Avs series, was related to his knee, Bowness said today (via Billeck). He wouldn’t have played had the series extended to seven games. The 25-year-old sustained the knee injury in the team’s penultimate game of the regular season against the Kraken. It was otherwise a strong second season for Barron in Winnipeg, providing solid depth scoring in a fourth-line role with 11 goals and 18 points in 80 games, along with a +10 rating and team-average possession metrics. He has one season left on his contract at a $1.35MM cap hit and will be eligible to sign an extension beginning July 1.