With a little over a week in the driver’s seat of the Dallas Stars, interim head coach Rick Bowness is still settling into his new role.
In today’s hockey world, the name Rick Bowness probably doesn’t mean much to you unless you have a little grey in your hair. Bowness isn’t exactly a household name like Crosby, McDavid or Gritty, but no one else in National Hockey League history has coached more games than the 64-year-old Canadian.
A good player in his own right, Bowness was a second-round draft pick by the Atlanta Flames in 1975. Throughout his career, he bounced back and forth between the NHL and minor leagues before retiring early to pursue other opportunities in the hockey world. He coached several teams in Canada as an assistant coach before landing his first head coach gig as the coach of the Moncton Hawks in the mid-1980s. Not long after he was named interim head coach of the Winnipeg Jets after they fired their coach mid-season, but didn’t return the following year.
Bowness has been either an associate or assistant head coach to the Jets, Islanders, Coyotes, Canucks, Lightning, and Stars, and has been a head coach with the Jets, Bruins, Senators, Islanders and now, the Dallas Stars. He has spent a quarter of a century alone in the National Hockey League as either an assistant or associate head coach. But what he has in experience, he lacks in success.
In his head coaching career, Bowness has only one playoff appearance.
He has a 127-291-49 career head coaching record, which calculates to an abysmal Point Percentage of 33%.
He has never won a division title as a head coach and has only finished better than 4th twice in his career.
The Stars have the pieces to get it done and definitely have the experience in years behind the bench, but it will take a little bit longer to figure out if it will be a winning combination moving forward, but unfortunately, the numbers and history are stacked against the team for the remainder of the season.
Featured Image: Dallas Morning News
