| Evason fired, Bowness hired in Columbus [message #849483] |
Mon, 12 January 2026 16:20  |
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 Adam
Messages: 7660
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB
6 Cups
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Tough season for CBJ after looking like they might be on the cusp of something last year. The wheels have come off several of their better players (Fantilli on pace for a sub-50 point season, Kent Johnson going from 57 points last year to just 12 this year with some time as a healthy scratch). There's something wrong there for sure - and the coaches paid for it with their jobs today.
Head-scratching decision though on who they hire as the replacement. Rick Bowness is 70 years old with a 309-408-48-37 record as an NHL head coach. He's coming off getting axed by Dallas where their players basically asked management en masse to get rid of him over player treatment (most glaringly, Oetingger in final game against the Oilers this past Spring).
Bowness is one of the losingest coaches of all-time with a .438 winning percentage. There's only two other coaches (Jacques Demers .471 and Sid Abel .477) with 400 losses and losing records. Those two are the only ones beside him who have coached 800 or more games and aren't over .500 too and neither of them had the benefit of shootout wins to puff up the numbers.
The only person who has anything close to the number of games and is clearly worse is Milt Schmidt who had 770 games and was 250-394-126. He somehow got 11 seasons coaching the Bruins between 1955-66 with only 3 of them over .500. He then got hired to be the third head coach of the dreadful Washington Capitals (also the third coach of their inaugural season. He only lasted until halfway through season #2.
Just a crazy hire for a young, struggling team. Bowness with a bad team gets bad results. Given a good team he can win games but probably can't get them over the top. It's hard to see this being anything but a bad hire for Columbus.
"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks
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oilfan94
Messages: 526
Registered: June 2006
Location: USA
No Cups
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Bowness was actually the coach before this last one in Dallas. He got them to the Stanley Cup final in 2020. He coached the Jets most recently in 2024 before retiring. I see this as a Ken Hitchcock fill out the rest of the season kind of move.
Also, his loss stats are inflated by the fact that he had to coach the Ottawa Senators expansion team when they first started. if you remove his Ottawa years he is 271-230-30-37 as a coach, which most of that being after the age of 65.
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Adam
Messages: 7660
Registered: August 2005
Location: Edmonton, AB
6 Cups
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| oilfan94 wrote on Mon, 12 January 2026 16:26 |
Bowness was actually the coach before this last one in Dallas. He got them to the Stanley Cup final in 2020. He coached the Jets most recently in 2024 before retiring. I see this as a Ken Hitchcock fill out the rest of the season kind of move.
Also, his loss stats are inflated by the fact that he had to coach the Ottawa Senators expansion team when they first started. if you remove his Ottawa years he is 271-230-30-37 as a coach, which most of that being after the age of 65.
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Oh, you're right. I'm confusing him a little with DeBoer.
That said, his departure in Winnipeg wasn't exactly stellar with the players either. And I maintain that he failed to get anything out of his expansion team the entire time he was there, and he's only just above fake .500 even with a bunch of time with two good teams in Winnipeg and Dallas. He's not a coach who's ever lifted a team.
And now he's 70. He ain't turning around the Blue Jackets.
"Thinking that a bad team's best players are the reason the team is bad is the "Tambellini re-signing Lennart Petrell" of sports opinions." @Woodguy55
#FireBobbyNicks
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