'Life-changing moments' bring Jets' Bowness to end of the road

Get the latest from Paul Friesen straight to your inbox

Published May 06, 2024  •  Last updated 2 hours ago  •  4 minute read

Former Winnipeg Jets head coach Rick Bowness walks off at the end of a news conference at which he announced his retirement from coaching in the NHL on May 6, 2024. Photo by Kevin King /Winnipeg Sun

The reason Rick Bowness is retiring after 38 seasons on NHL benches is the same reason he cried at his farewell news conference on Monday.

Sign In or Create an Account

or

Article content

It wasn’t the result of a hockey game or a playoff series.

Article content

It wasn’t a realization he’d wrung everything he could from the Winnipeg Jets, that there was no more to get.

And it certainly wasn’t a loss of passion for the game.

The reason Bowness is going to stay at his lakefront home in Nova Scotia beyond the summer months for the first time in his life was sitting at the back of the room.

It was his wife, Judy.

At one point on Monday, Bowness paused mid-sentence, emotion stealing his breath and tears filling his eyes.

“It’s your fault,” he said, looking at his partner of 53 years.

Together since they were 16, the couple has faced what Bowness describes as “life-changing moments” in his two years on the Winnipeg bench.

In Season 1, it was a harsh case of COVID that felled the coach, the side effects lingering on and on.

Article content

Article content

This past season, it was his wife suffering a middle-of-the-night seizure which caused their world to stand still.

Another medical procedure took the coach away from his team yet again, and other health issues are still to be resolved.

Along with simply getting up there, that’s the kind of stuff that causes one to pause.

Bowness had already decided to call it a career two summers ago when Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff called him during a round of golf and eventually changed his mind.

The coach made this latest decision right after a round of the playoffs.

“Honestly, walking off the ice,” he said. “I didn’t like me, I didn’t like the way our team played, which is on me. So I was unhappy with myself, unhappy that we had lost, and that bothered me.

Article content

“As I was standing there and I was looking around, it dawned on me. It just hit me then. It’s time.”

Former coaches had told him he’d know, something he’d always kept in mind.

Minutes later, after leaving the bench for the 2,726th time, more than anyone in NHL history, he was holding back tears as he addressed his players one last time.

“There was an inkling that he was leaning this way,” captain Adam Lowry recalled.

After his post-game media session that night, Bowess returned to the coaches’ offices and let it out.

“I’m done,” he told them. “I’m finished. I’m going to retire. And they’re all looking at me, ‘You sure? You want to take some time on this?’”

Associate coach Scott Arniel says his boss “caught us all off-guard.”

Article content

“I knew the health thing was a big part of his decision,” Arniel said. “But … it was still hard to hear.”

It has to be hard to leave, too.

Particularly after getting so close to the ultimate goal he could taste it – three times.

Bowness reached Stanley Cup finals with three different teams, most recently as the head coach in Dallas (2020) and as an assistant in Tampa Bay (2015) and Vancouver (2011).

He took the Jets job for one last run at it, falling well short.

But experience also puts that in perspective.

“As you age, you hope you have an impact on your players’ lives off the ice, on the ice,” Bowness said. “And that’s been more important to me over the last 10 years.”

While Bowness never sipped champagne from the Stanley Cup, he did spoon some of Judy’s clam chowder from it when his son, Ryan, then a scout for the champion Pittsburgh Penguins, brought it to Nova Scotia for a day in 2017.

Article content

“She’s been through the whole ride,” Bowness said.

Going back to junior hockey, that ride went through 14 different cities in 12 seasons as a player, another 12 stops coming as a coach, two of them in Winnipeg.

“Hockey is all we know as a family,” Bowness said. “We’d run into people at home in the summer, like, ‘How do you do this?’ But it’s the only life our kids knew. ‘Dad’s playing, dad’s coaching, we’re moving again.’ That was a normal life to them.”

In all that packing and unpacking, pulling up stakes here, hammering them back in there, what are the odds of a 38-year career beginning and ending in the same place?

“I couldn’t have picked a better place to come back and finish my career.”

Recommended from Editorial

Winnipeg Jets' Rick Bowness a finalist for Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year

Jets Setting: Is a major overhaul coming for the Jets this offseason?

Article content

In some ways, Bowness saved his best for last.

His 52 wins this season was a career high. For the first time he’s a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL coach of the year.

His record in two seasons with the Jets, 98-57-9, is much better than his career winning percentage of .439.

None of those numbers stack up to the people whose lives he’s touched, the lifetime friends he’s made.

“I’m hearing today from guys I played with … and from all over the world, just people you coached,” the 69-year-old said. “People don’t understand what we go through. But we all understand what we go through.”

One understood more than the rest.

The one who was waving the Jets towel from the stands last Tuesday, cheering her husband and his team as he walked off the ice for the last time.

Here’s to a healthy and happy retirement, coach.

[email protected]

X: @friesensunmedia

Article content