Jets' Bowness hangs 'em up
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Published May 06, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 3 minute read
The Rick Bowness era in Winnipeg is over.
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The 69-year-old head coach is retiring after 38 seasons in the NHL, the Jets announced on Monday. There was no immediate word on his replacement.
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Bowness is coming off perhaps his most impressive season, one that saw him lead the Jets to 52 wins, tying a franchise record, including a team-record 25 on the road.
The New Brunswick product last week was, for the first time in his career, named one of three finalists for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top coach, only to walk away from the game days later.
Bowness’s final season was marked by personal challenges that twice took him away from the team, once when his wife fell ill and once for his own medical procedure.
In his first of two years with the Jets he contracted COVID, which lingered.
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His two seasons will be remembered as a roller-coaster on the ice, too.
Taking over a team that former coach Paul Maurice had given up on, one that missed the playoffs amid calls for more accountability from its players, Bowness led the Jets back to the playoffs in his first year.
A meek, first-round exit at the hands of Vegas left him so upset he called out his team for a lack of push-back and called their effort disgusting, causing several players, including former captain Blake Wheeler, to call him out in their subsequent exit interviews.
Mending fences over the summer and benefitting from changes to the roster, Bowness regained his team’s trust and had high hopes going into this year’s playoffs.
Allowing the fewest goals in the NHL, the Jets appeared ready to make a postseason run, only to fall in five games to Colorado.
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“So they brought me in to do what? Change the culture,” Bowness said last Thursday. “This organization, this team, had a bad reputation. We’ve improved that. We fixed that. We had to give the team a better identity that gave them a chance to win. We did that. We had to get this team back in the playoffs. We did that.
“So we’ve made huge strides. But now we have to take it to the next level.”
Asked about his future after the series, he was coy.
“I know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I know what I want to do. That will come out. We will let you know.”
Bowness compiled a 98-57-9 record with the Jets, the eighth NHL team on a one-of-a-kind resume that put him on the bench for 2,726 games as a head coach or assistant, more than anyone in league history.
His teams reached the Stanley Cup final three times, most recently when he was the head coach in Dallas in 2020, but he never won it.
His first game on an NHL bench was as an assistant with the original Jets in 1984-85.
“Still love it. Still have the passion for it,” he said last week. “As I tell the players, every day in this league is a blessing. Never, ever, take a day for granted in this league. And I never have and I never will. I just love this game. It’s been my life.”
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