Bowness points Getting down to the nitty-gritty with Jets head coach By: Mike McIntyre Posted: 6:33 PM CDT Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022 Last Modified: 11:40 AM CDT Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 Updates

BANFF, Alta. — Rick Bowness is pretty much an open book every day of the week. It’s not in his nature to be cagey or cryptic or guarded. He’ll call a spade a spade and tell you what he thinks. But get the 67-year-old away from the rink, free of the usual stresses and pressures that come with being an NHL coach, and you’ll find an even less guarded, more forthcoming individual.

With his Winnipeg Jets enjoying a second straight day of team bonding in this picturesque mountain town — they hit the water Saturday to fish, then hit the links Sunday to golf — the Free Press caught up with Bowness at the beautiful Fairmont Banff Springs to chat about a variety of topics.

On having to make one more cut to the roster by Tuesday’s deadline:

“At this time of the year, there’s no easy way. No one has played their way out of here, but someone has to leave. It’s that simple.”

On figuring out his new leadership group:

Bowness revealed they will have three alternates this year, with no rotation. He’s already stated Mark Scheifele and Josh Morrissey will keep their letters from last year. It would now appear one of Adam Lowry or Pierre-Luc Dubois will sport the other, with a final decision to be announced prior to Friday’s season-opener against the New York Rangers.

“What I’ve seen so far is that guys have taken it upon themselves to do the things that we’re asking everyone to do. Without me grabbing the leadership group, they’ve navigated it. But I’m watching, I’m listening and I’m hearing – and I’m watching guys take it upon themselves. Sometimes that just evolves naturally. We’ve got enough veterans here and with the issues that we see, we expect them to address those issues. But I want everybody. Rookies or whatever. They all have to be part of what we’re doing.”

On an aggressive style we saw snippets of during the 4-1-1 preseason:

“We’re building to read off each other and pressure the puck when we don’t have it. If you want to be hard to play against in this league, you’ve got to pressure the opposition. You’ve got to be on top of them and you’ve got to be above (the puck) and then you’ve got to do something with the puck when you do get it.”

As a recent example, Bowness loved what he saw in the first and third periods on Friday night in Calgary, for example. Not so much in the second period.

“For us, when we’re on our game on that forecheck, they weren’t getting out and we caused a lot of turnovers. We’ve got to do more with it when we get it, which is another issue for me. There’s just way too many turnovers because when you turn the puck over, your structure goes right out the window. You just don’t have time to recover because they’re coming at you.”

On how quickly he felt players started buying what he was selling during training camp:

“Right away. Great effort, great attitudes. When you miss the playoffs you’re anxious to get back on the ice. You are. It’s a long, long summer. So we had that working to our advantage, everyone was ready to go in camp. The attitudes, the work habits, the coming to the rink ready to work has been outstanding since day one. A lot of that has to do with missing the playoffs. It hurts, and it’s a long, long summer. And you don’t want to do it again.”

On whether this group was broken, at least in spirit, after last season:

“You miss the playoffs and yeah, it’s a tough year. But if you’ve noticed the last couple of games how quick we are to stick up for each other, when somebody takes a run at us, we’re all in there. So, that tells you that the room is healed, whatever the issues were are gone. Now, if they weren’t jumping in when somebody gets hit, okay then it’s lingering. To me, it’s gone and there’s no sense in talking about it anymore. It’s what we’re seeing now, that’s all that matters. If you take a run at one of us, you take a run at all of us. The guys have bought into that philosophy.”

On cutting down high-danger chances:

“Our team needs to be structured in all three zones to spend less time in our zone, and then you cut down on those Grade As. But it also goes back to your breakouts, let’s get that thing moving. That’s where we want to play fast, we don’t want to hang on to the puck, we want to get that thing moving out of our zone as fast as we can.”

On whether an aggressive style is sustainable:

“Yes. The schedule will always catch up with you at some point. Managing our schedule and our days off and our practices is a huge part of a coach’s job today. Managing the time off, when to give them a push, when to travel, when to have a light practice, hard practice. And that’s why you have to rely on your four lines. So when you are in those situations, your fourth line is playing 10-12 minutes and the other guys are coming back a little bit, the top-end guys, and not playing 22 minutes. So we’ve got to battle that as well, depending on the score, of course.”

On getting the top line of Mark Scheifele, Nikolaj Ehlers and Kyle Connor to be defensively responsible:

“I tell them every line has to look the same when we don’t have the puck. Do we expect everyone to back check? Absolutely. There’s no free pass here. Absolutely not. Everyone has to back pressure. Everyone has to come back into our zone. When we don’t have the puck, we should all look the same. Different skillset when we have (the puck), and they have a little more freedom and you have to give your elite players that. But when we don’t have it, there’s no two sets of rules. It’s one rule. Everyone is on the same page and everyone is working to get it back.”

On core players like Scheifele, Pierre-Luc Dubois and Connor Hellebuyck being two years away from unrestricted free agency:

“I don’t get into the contracts. They’re Winnipeg Jets, they’re playing for the Winnipeg Jets. The future will take care of itself. The way our league is structured now, when you earn that right to go to unrestricted free agency, you’ve earned it, do what you need to do. You’re going to do what’s best for you and your family and your career. So we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now this is all about getting this team ready to get back into the fight and get them back into the playoffs. That’s all that matters. Two years from, then we’ll worry about it.”

On life in the Central Division:

“These top six teams…I mean, the Metropolitan is tough, everyone will say that about their division, but we have five teams in the Central Division make the playoffs last year, and three in the Pacific. That may change this year, who knows what the rosters look like when we get going. But the top six teams in this division are all good, competitive playoff-bound hockey teams and one of them is going to miss, for sure.”

On leaning into analytics:

“As a coach, you have to gather as much information as you can. Then you have to decide what you want to pass on to your team. We’re going to look at analytics, we’re going to learn from analytics, but we’re not going to throw every analytic at the players. You got to play the game, right? You give them so much information they can’t think. We’ll pinpoint the analytics that we know are very important to the outcome of the game. Do we study analytics? Absolutely. It’s there. Use it.”

On what he’s heard while out and about in the community since returning to Winnipeg:

“It’s the same as when I was here before. This city has a tremendous passion for the Jets. They love their team. And that’s what I love. I love driving around and seeing all the Jets logos on the licence plates. It’s unreal. It just tells me and re-enforces what we knew from the 80s, and that’s that there’s a tremendous, tremendous passion and love for the team. People talk to you, yeah, and they’re all very hopeful and excited for the season. I love the passion this city has for the team.”

The Jets will practice today and Tuesday in Banff prior to heading home for final preparations for the start of the regular-season.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg