Jets Coach Rick Bowness Announces His Retirement After Nearly Four Decades Behind the Bench

Bowness served as a coach for a total of 2,726 NHL games, the most in the history of the league.

David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

One of the longest-serving coaches in NHL history is calling it a career after nearly 40 years behind the bench.

Winnipeg Jets coach Rick Bowness announced Monday that he is retiring after 38 years as an NHL coach.

Bowness, 69, played in the NHL for parts of six seasons and got his start coaching as a player-coach with the Sherbrooke Jets, Winnipeg’s AHL affiliate at the time, in 1982. After retiring as a player in ’84, he joined the Jets’ NHL coaching staff as an assistant.

Bowness served as a coach for a total of 2,726 NHL games, the most in the history of the league. Most of those games came as an assistant coach, but he did serve as a head coach for 803 games for seven different franchises.

This season was Bowness’s most successful as a head coach. He led the Jets to 52 wins, tying a franchise record for most victories in a season. They finished with 110 points, the second-most in the Western Conference. On Friday Bowness was named one of three finalists for the Jack Adams Award, which goes to the top coach in the NHL.

The Jets’ season ended when they lost in the first round of the playoffs against the Colorado Avalanche in five games.