When the Tampa Bay Lightning visited the Minnesota Wild on Friday night their associate coach, Rick Bowness, made a little bit of history.
When he took his spot behind the Lightning bench it was the 2,165th game that he coached in the NHL (as either an assistant or a head coach), breaking the record that had previously been held by Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman.
Bowness tied Bowman’s mark earlier this week in the Lightning’s 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Kings.
Bowness talked about the record on Friday before the game against Minnesota.
Most of those games over his 35-year coaching career have come as an assistant, but he has been a head coach for 463 games with five different teams in his career, including the Winnipeg Jets, Boston Bruins, Ottawa Senators, New York Islanders and Phoenix Coyotes.
When he became the head coach of the Senators during the 1992-93 season he was the very first coach in franchise history. They were his longest stop as an NHL head coach, spending three-and-a-half years behind their bench.
Before his coaching career began Bowness spent parts of six seasons in the NHL as a forward with the Atlanta Flames, Detroit Red Wings, St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets, playing in 173 games and scoring 18 goals to go with 37 assists.