The Columbus Blue Jackets played their final game of the 2025-26 regular season. It was a meaningless game in the standings with the Washington Capitals after both teams were eliminated by the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday night.
The Capitals prevailed 2-1 on Tuesday night. But the story of the game became what was said postgame by Blue Jackets’ head coach Rick Bowness. He came into the press conference room as angry as we’d ever seen him.
Bowness proceeded to tee off on the Blue Jackets about the state of their team culture. He first started off admitting he has never been a part of something so frustrating as their tailspin has been.
But then he immediately turned his attention to the game and what he saw.
“And you know what? All you gotta do is look at the stat sheet,” an angry Bowness said. “Three hits. 23 giveaways. 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. Like, how can you go out and play like that? 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. I don’t care. Show up and compete. Three hits, 23 giveaways. What else you wanna know?”
Bowness was asked where he thought their earlier momentum stopped. He pulled no punches on this one either.
“Because it got tough. Because it got hard,” Bowness said. “Like we talked about after the Olympic break, it’s gonna get harder. So everything is good as long as it’s going their way. And now it gets tough. We don’t want to battle back. Well, that’s what’s happened over the last couple weeks. That’s all that’s happened. We’re going to change that. If I’m back and I don’t know if I’m back, Don and I will talk. We’ll get to that. But man oh man, some of those guys are so lucky the season’s over and there’s no practice tomorrow. Anyways, there’s no more games.”
Bowness wrapped up his tirade by saying surprised wasn’t the right word but that disappointed was to describe the situation.
“Very disappointed,” Bowness continued. “We’ve got a good team and they do care. So I’m mad right now. But they do care. But they gotta show it on the ice. It’s what I told you in North Carolina. Shut up. Let your play do your talking for you, right? I know the game was meaningless. I get that. But you still have to play. We talked about it before. Play with some pride. We have got great fans here. They deserve better than that and they do. Love the fan base, love the enthusiasm, love the city. They got a lot of good things going here. We’re not putting up with that.”
As for what Bowness would do to change the culture if he is back next season:
“There’s ways. I’ve been around long enough to know I’ll find ways. I’ve had enough experience. We can deal with this. I’ve dealt with it before. If we’re back, we’ll straighten it out.”
With their season over, the Blue Jackets will hold their cleanout day on Wednesday from 10:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. eastern time. Stay tuned with the Hockey Writers for more reaction to the end of the Blue Jackets season that saw them finish their home schedule with an 0-5-1 ending, one of the worst home stretches in franchise history.
