The Dean Evason era of Blue Jackets began Monday when he was hired to be the 11th full-time head coach of the franchise.
So what can CBJ fans expect from the man with the seventh-best points percentage all-time among NHL coaches with at least 250 games behind a bench?
Time will tell exactly how the Blue Jackets develop an identity under the 59-year-old former player and longtime coach, but his introduction to fans on Tuesday gave some clues as to the type of team he’d like to put together.
In many cases, he said exactly what you’d expect a hockey coach to say, as he hopes to build a team-first identity for the Jackets with players who play hard and with accountability. Of course, defining what you want your hockey team to be isn’t brain surgery, but the true art comes in how to get there.
Evason had success in Minnesota building that identity, leading the Wild to four straight postseason appearances. Can he do it in Columbus, and what can fans expect from the new head coach?
READ MORE: Instant analysis | 5 Questions with Evason
To start, the No. 1 thing will be a team that will give its all on the ice on a night-in, night-out basis.
“When we go into a building or teams come in here, they know that if they don’t work hard, they lose,” he said. “Simple as that. Our hockey club will work hard each and every night. We might get beat on skill-set or something one night or another, but we can never get outworked.”
Here are five more takeaways from Evason’s introductory press conference Tuesday.
Evason on his preferred style
It’s perhaps the first and most obvious question to ask a new coach – what type of team would he like to have?
It’s something that seemingly evolved in his time with the Wild. The squad won more than half of its games in all three of his full seasons behind the bench, but they got there in different ways.
In the 2021-22 season in which Minnesota set a team record with 53 wins, the Wild finished fifth in the NHL in scoring and 16th in team defense. A year later, the squad was 23rd in scoring but sixth in defense while still making it to the postseason.
So it might not be fair to describe him as an offensive- or defensive-minded coach, but one who wants to get the most out of his team. Rather than focusing on stats, the focus is on style of play.
“Do we want to be an offensive team?” he said. “Sure, 100 percent. Do we want to score off the rush every single time? 100 percent. I would love our goals to be super pretty, tic-tac-toe, score a goal going to the net, drive the net, hit the late D – love it. But the (opposing) players are really good. So sometimes you have to dump the puck in. If we can be the best forechecking team to get the puck back, now we can do what we want.
“Do we want to be good in the neutral zone? Of course. Do we want to keep the puck out of the net and be a defensive team? Of course. But everything will be based on pressure. We want to put pressure on teams in the defensive zone, neutral zone, offensive zone, with the detail of our sticks, with the detail of our structure, systematically, in order to allow us to get up the ice and score goals.”
Evason brings passion
When Blue Jackets general manager and president of hockey operations Don Waddell introduced Evason, the thing he kept coming back to was the new coach’s passion for the game.
So I couldn’t help but ask, where does that passion come from?
“When my mom comes to town, I’ll let you meet her,” he said. “It’s right there. It doesn’t fall too far from the tree. My father played (hockey), too, but it’s in you, right? I don’t care what I play. Don and I were just talking about, I play no sports that will hurt my golf swing now, but any sport that I play, it’s full on. I don’t know any other way. It’s always been that way.”
“I’ve been fortunate because it’s allowed me to play in the National Hockey League and it probably allowed me to be sitting in this seat right now. My inner drive is as much as anyone’s external expectations of me. I have huge expectations of myself and what I do and take great pride in that, and I look forward to bringing that passion, that desire, that drive, to the Columbus Blue Jackets.”
Evason on communication
When you talk about accountability and a team-first atmosphere, one of the most important things that will go into it is communication. It’s perhaps the most critical thing a successful organization must have, especially at a level where the margins are as thin as professional hockey.
For Evason, that was a big note to hit at his introductory press conference, and he said he’d start getting in touch with his new players the day after the event. In some cases, his hope is to travel across North America to visit key players in an effort to begin the process of getting to know them.
The most important thing, he said, is to treat players fairly.
“You react to different players different ways,” he said. “You have to get to know them. You have to build a relationship. You have to build a trust in them that you can teach them. One of the things that gets lost in our league is that people forget that these guys still want to be taught. They want to be coached. They want to be treated fairly but firmly to not just run and have structure, and I think it’s my job and the coaches’ job to build those relationships and get the best out of each player.”
Evason on the Blue Jackets
It’s fair to say the new coach might not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the roster yet. After all, the Wild and Blue Jackets met only twice a season during his tenure in Minnesota, and he just got the job this week.
So Evason is doing his best to get through the learning curve of getting to know a new team, but he has of course taken a look at the roster and the prospects on hand. So far, he’s a fan of what he sees.
“I don’t know what’s happened in the past,” he said. “You can speculate, you can look from the outside in, but I don’t know exactly how they’ve conducted themselves within the room and how they are as a team and how they play for each other.
“But that’s my job and that’s a coach’s job and management’s job to put people in place and get them to play hard each and every night. Everything excites me right now. I don’t know exactly what we have in that room, but I know from the outside looking in, it’s fantastic on paper. It’s my job and the coaches’ job to get the best out of them.”
Evason has personality
Introductory press conferences in general are serious affairs, but I think it says something that Evason wasn’t afraid to bring a little levity to the proceedings a few times.
When it comes to showing some personality, Evason hit a lot of good notes, projecting confidence and giving direct answers while also letting people get to know him a bit. In Minnesota, he was known for his honesty and regular-guy persona, and it was evident in his first meeting with the media.
One funny exchange came when Waddell chose to compare his new coach to his previous one in Carolina, Rod Brind’Amour.
“When I took over my previous team and hired Rod, the one thing that Rod had going was the same, was passion,” Waddell said. “I’ll probably get beat up for this, but Rod was probably a better player.”
Evason – who racked up more than 1,000 penalty minutes over 13 seasons – quickly interjected.
“100 percent he was a better player.”
“But I would say Dean was tough,” Waddell said, trying to continue.
“I don’t know about that either,” Evason said. “I could fight. That’s it.”
There were also running jokes about celebrating the birthday of CBJ vice president of communications, Todd Sharrock, and Evason apologizing to reporters he didn’t text back about the job.
And when asked about coaching young players, Evason couldn’t help but quip about his work with Kirill Kaprizov in Minnesota as well as Alex Ovechkin in Washington.
“I taught both of them everything they know,” he said. “I’m pretty good with Russians, clearly. Especially Ovi’s shot – I worked a lot on that.”
