Rick Bowness and his boat, Jim Nill is always talking, and burying my beef with Charlie Coyle
A quick dispatch from Columbus -- maybe you'll get that word play, either way, enjoy!
Greetings from Columbus, where the Blue Jackets will host the Dallas Stars tonight.
I’ll be at the game and will probably write something in addition to doing postgame on-location for DLLS, which you can watch here.
Before that, and before grabbing a late lunch with my college roommate who lives in Columbus, I wanted to share some stories/notes/thoughts from the being at the rink today.
On Rick Bowness being back behind an NHL bench
Rick Bowness surprisingly came out of retirement to coach the Columbus Blue Jackets earlier this month.
I’ve known Bowness since his time with the Stars, he was one of the better guests we had on Expected by Whom?, and he’s always been good about sharing more human stories.
(Side note, Prashanth and I have been texting, Expected by Whom? will return, we are hammering out logistics.)
So, I was curios how Bowness’ wife Judy took it when her soon-to-be 71-year-old husband was ready to leave retirement and get behind an NHL bench again.
Turns out she was more excited than he was.
Rick and Judy Bowness were on their boat in Tampa when Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell called him. Rick assumed the call would be about a player that Bowness coached before, Waddell doing background research before a trade. Instead it was about potentially coming back to coach.
Rick said he asked Judy if they wanted to go to Columbus and she said “yes,” before he could.
While Bowness had remained busy doing TV work during his “retirement,” he said both he and Judy missed the people around the rink. They missed connecting with others and while they enjoyed boat life, it was time to get back into a rink.
On Stars GM Jim Nill and roster moves
After speaking with Bowness I also chatted with Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill about the state of his team and the current trade market.
In Nill’s words, things are still “status quo” right now and the market still isn’t settled. There are teams trying to make sense of whether they are buyers or sellers and he’s being patient as that all sorts itself out.
He’s also chatting with Waddell today in Columbus, which is a good reminder that general managers talk all the time.
I bring this up, because there are so often reports of teams talking and GMs and chatting. The reality is that most GMs communicate to at least a handful of other GMs nearly every day.
If you really wanted to push narratives or drive clicks, I could write something along the lines of “Stars and Blue Jackets GMs talking, what does it mean?????” and then follow it up with random trade ideas. It would do great numbers, the SEO would slap — my 7-year-old used that phrase the other day, “slap” not SEO — but it wouldn’t be accurate.
“That’s social media now, right?” Nill said. “I’m talking to everyone almost every day. That’s my business, it’s our job. If I’m not doing that, I’m not my job.”
