Rick Bowness announces retirement

After 38 seasons as a coach in the NHL and two tours of duty with the Winnipeg Jets Rick Bowness has annnounced his retirement. In his final run with the Jets the Moncton, MB native took the team to the playoffs twice and a 98-57-9 regular season record.

This past season Bowness and the club set three francise records. The most road wins(25), longest winning streak on two different occasions Dec. 30- Jan. 24 and again April 1-18. As well the Jets set a franchise record by going 35 games allowing three goals or fewer. Bowness was named a finalist for the 2023-24 Jack Adams Award which is awarded to “the NHL coach adjudged to have contributed the most to his team’s success”.

Bowness was a coach for eight different teams and was invovled with 17 playoff appearances. He made the Cup finals in 2011 with the Vancouver Canucks in 2011 as a associate coach, in 2015 he went to the cup finals with the Tampa Bay Lightning and the for the final time as the head coach of the Dallas Stars in 2020. He is one of three coaches to work behind the bench through five decades, the other two were Pat Quinn and Scotty Bowman. Bowness coached 2,726 the most of anyone in NHL history and held a record of 310-408-48 as a head coach.