Minnesota Wild head coach Dean Evason speaks to players during NHL hockey training camp Sept. 22, 2022, in St. Paul, Minn. The Columbus Blue Jackets announced July 22, 2024, that they've hired Evason as their new coach.Carlos Gonzalez/The Associated Press
The Columbus Blue Jackets hired Dean Evason as coach on Monday, filling the NHL’s final vacancy two months before training camps open.
Evason, 59, will be Columbus’s third coach in as many seasons – not counting Mike Babcock being hired and resigning on the eve of training camp last September. The team said Evason agreed to a multiyear contract.
New Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell fired Pascal Vincent not long after taking over control of the organization’s hockey operations department. Evason ultimately emerged as the top candidate in the coaching search to replace Vincent.
“[Evason] has spent well over two decades in this league as a player, assistant coach and head coach and I believe that experience, combined with the outstanding person he is, will allow Dean to get the best out of our players and put us in a position to succeed as a team,” Waddell said in a statement.
Evason coached the Minnesota Wild for parts of the past five seasons before being fired and replaced by John Hynes in November. This is his second head-coaching job in the league, a career that also included a stint as an assistant with Washington and then Minnesota, for which he was a midseason replacement of Bruce Boudreau in 2020.
In this role, Evason is tasked with helping end the Blue Jackets’ postseason drought. They have missed the playoffs each of the past four years and have yet to get past the second round in 24 seasons as a franchise.
“There is a great core and a lot of young talent on this team,” Evason said. “I am really looking forward to working with this group and helping us become a team that plays extremely hard and competes at the highest level.”
Evason was a centre during his playing days, appearing in more than 800 games with Washington, Hartford, San Jose, Dallas and Calgary from 1983-96.