Rick Bowness didn’t bother dressing things up on Friday.
After a 45-minute practice and a three-minute media availability that sounded more like a coach airing out frustration than answering routine questions, the Columbus Blue Jackets’ bench boss made it plain where his head is: not with excuses, but with the numbers.
“You can’t be slow.”
That was the message Bowness delivered during practice as Columbus tried to shake off a 7-3 home loss to the Florida Panthers from Tuesday. The Blue Jackets will jump right into a back-to-back starting Saturday against the New York Rangers, then head to Minnesota on Sunday to face the Wild.
A win Saturday would get Columbus back to .500 at 3-3, and given how early it is, that would hardly be a disaster. But Bowness wasn’t interested in softening the edges of the conversation.
He was bothered. Very bothered.
“Yeah, we want pace,” Bowness acknowledged. “But I’m just, you look at our team.
Like, we’re 30th in the league in goals against. 30th! I’ve never coached a team that was 30th in the league in goals against.
So do we need some more games to straighten things out? Yep.
Do we need pace in practice to straighten things out? Yep.”
He didn’t stop there.
“I’m mad. I’m just really mad where we’re sitting.
I’m mad at myself. I hate seeing the 30th goals against.
That bothers me. We’ll fix it.
We need games. Yep.
We need better practices. Yep.
We need all that. We’ll get going.
But right now, we should all be very angry at where we are.”
The frustration isn’t isolated to the coach. Bowness said the players feel the same way about the start.
“They’re like I am,” he said of the locker room. “They’re not happy where we are.
You go back to how we finished and all the talks during the summer. That’s all fine and dandy.
But when the puck drops, man, you better have some anger, right? And we can do better with that and that starts with me.
I get that.”
The goals-against ranking tells part of the story, but not all of it. Columbus has given up 21 goals in its first five games, which works out to 4.20 per game. That’s tied for 29th in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings, who have allowed the same number.
The offense has held up better, with the Blue Jackets averaging three goals per game so far. Even so, they’ve been outscored by more than a goal per game, and the special teams have made the climb tougher.
Columbus enters Saturday with a 16.7% power-play conversion rate. The penalty kill is where things have really gone sideways. After allowing four power-play goals to Florida, the Blue Jackets sit 30th in the league at 61.1% on the penalty kill.
That’s exactly the kind of breakdown Bowness keeps circling back to.
“We’ve got to, first and foremost, do what we’re supposed to do, right? Clear the puck when we can clear the puck.
Read off each other a little bit better. So those things are crucial.
If they were doing everything they’re supposed to do and the puck was going in, then it’s up to the coaches to change it. But right now, that’s not really the case.”
“And when we’re doing it right, we’ve had some success. And when we’re not, 4 or 5 guys in the same - it’s going in the back of the net.
I’m upset at that very a lot. And we’re going to have to fix that.”
For Bowness, the issue goes beyond merely surviving special teams situations. He wants those moments to swing games in Columbus’ direction, not hand momentum to the other side.
“We get a power play halfway through the first period. You’re supposed to go out there and give us some momentum.
They didn’t do anything. They gave the other team momentum.
So we talked a lot about improving our specialty teams. The coaches have to change that and so do the players.
We’re better than this and that makes me upset.”
By the end of Friday, the message was hard to miss. The Blue Jackets aren’t just looking for cleaner execution. They’re looking for urgency, and they’re looking for it fast.
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