Rick Bowness wasted no time going after his team after the Columbus Blue Jackets’ 7-3 loss to the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night.
The Columbus coach said the kind of effort he saw should hit the room hard enough to spark a response, and he made it clear the standard is higher than what the Blue Jackets showed.
“You have to hope, you got to believe that performance tonight will embarrass them enough to stop this, right?” Bowness told reporters after the game, according to The Hockey Writers’ Mark Scheig.
“Because if they’re not embarrassed by that, we don’t want them on the team. It’s as simple as that.”
Columbus actually opened the night with a 1-0 lead after the first period, but the game flipped fast. Brady Tkachuk put together a natural hat trick in the second period, and all three of those goals came with assists from his brother Matthew. Brady finished with three goals and an assist, while Matthew piled up five assists.
The Panthers kept pouring it on from there. Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe each scored twice, while Kent Johnson, Denton Mateychuk and Cole Sillinger accounted for the Blue Jackets’ goals.
The loss was Columbus’ third in its last four games, and the team is now 2-3-0 through its first stretch of the season.
This wasn’t the first time Bowness has ripped into the group since taking over behind the bench midway through the 2025-26 campaign. After the Blue Jackets’ final regular-season game last spring, he called out the players and spelled out the problems he saw over his first four months on the job.
“I don’t know if I’m back, but if I’m back, I’m changing this culture. These guys, they don’t care.
Losing is not important enough to them. It doesn’t bother them,” Bowness said in April.
“How can you go out and play like that? (I) should have done this about a month ago, but this is why we are where we are.
This is why we’re out of the playoffs, that kind of effort. Losing, you have to hate losing.
I don’t care if it’s a meaningless game.”
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