DALLAS (AP) — No bones about it, the Dallas Stars nonetheless love Rick Bowness. They should wait till subsequent month to look the previous coach who took them to the Stanley Cup Final simply greater than two years in the past.
Bowness, now Winnipeg’s coach, ignored Monday night time’s sport in Dallas as a result of a good COVID-19 take a look at that still saved the 67-year-old coach out of the season opener 3 nights previous.
“Our time together was awesome,” Stars captain captain Jamie Benn mentioned after the morning skate.
“He’s just a guy that has the biggest heart I’ve ever met for a coach and as a person,” Tyler Seguin said. “He wears it on the ice, obviously on the bench, and he wears it off the ice most importantly. So he’s just a guy that no matter what, he doesn’t change.”
The Stars are scheduled to play in Winnipeg in 3 weeks, on Nov. 8. The Jets can be again in Dallas on Nov. 25 to wrap up the regular-season collection between the groups.
Bowness’ contract with the Stars expired after remaining season, which ended with an additional time loss in Game 7 in opposition to Calgary within the first spherical of the playoffs. Days later, he mentioned he used to be stepping away to let the Dallas group pursue a distinct course, and that the transfer did not essentially imply he used to be achieved with training.
Winnipeg, the place he coached the overall 28 video games of the 1988-89 season, employed Bowness as its new head coach in early July.
Benn mentioned he does wonder whether issues would had been other had the Stars gained every other sport in remaining season’s playoffs, however mentioned so far as the “captain and the relationship with the head coach, I had a great one in Bones.”
Seguin and Benn they nonetheless keep involved with Bowness and his spouse, Judy.
Over a occupation that has spanned 5 other many years, Bowness has been on an NHL bench for a report 2,562 regular-season video games as a head coach or an assistant.
“There’s very few guys that have been in the game as long as him. You can’t find anybody that has a bad word about the man,” new Stars coach Pete DeBoer mentioned. “He did an improbable activity right here, and a basis of protecting and being arduous to play in opposition to and playoff luck. … His fingerprints are in this workforce from his time right here.”
Bowness used to be 89-62-25 as head coach in Dallas, the place he used to be a second-year assistant ahead of being named meantime head coach in December 2019 after Jim Montgomery used to be fired for off-ice problems. Bowness led the Stars to the Stanley Cup Final all the way through the pandemic-interrupted season that ended within the NHL bubble in Canada. The meantime tag used to be got rid of after that, and he were given a two-year contract as head coach.
Seguin mentioned there used to be nobody higher than Bowness to deal with this sort of scenario.
“Just the way he can bring a group together, the way he can bring a group with wives and girlfriends and just the whole family-oriented place, it’s a place that everyone felt comfortable in, a place that was accountable, but we were definitely family first,” Seguin mentioned. “When you talk about a man … someone you want to look up to as far as a leader or a husband or just how to operate as a human being in the world, Bones is one of the first guys come to mind.”
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