Don Waddell Selects Dean Evason as Coach of Columbus Blue Jackets

Blue Jackets fans spent the summer walking around, phones in hand, waiting for word on the coach. Don Waddell, the new president of hockey operations/general manager, took office the day after Memorial Day. Father’s Day, the summer solstice, the NHL Draft and Independence Day came and went. And the search continued.

You were beginning to wonder if Waddell would have his man by training camp—a chilling thought in Columbus, given what happened last year. You were beginning to wonder if Waddell, with his 30+ years of front-office experience, was wavering. Or if chief of business ops Mike Priest was messing things up with his abacus. And when will Kirill Marchenko get a contract? Cole Sillinger? Kent Johnson? This was supposed to be the dawn of a new era, and it felt like the decades-old status quo still had its noose around the franchise’s neck.

The wait is finally over.

Waddell has his man, and that’s Dean Evason, the Blue Jackets announced on Monday.

My first reaction comes from a personal, local perspective: It’s never a bad idea to bring in an old Whaler. There was a secret sauce that was being spread over Hartford in the mid-80s. The 1986 Whalers came up short in overtime of Game 7 to defeat rookie goalie Patrick Roy and the Montreal Canadians in the Wales Conference finals. For the Habs, it opened an easy path to the Stanley Cup. A year later, the Whalers won the Adams Division and were defeated in the first round of the playoffs by the Quebec Nordiques. Evason played on those young, up-and-coming Whalers teams.

Among his teammates from that era: Kevin Dineen (original Blue Jacket, former NHL head coach, now coach of AHL Utica); Ray Ferraro (ESPN/ABC’s top color analyst); Ron Francis (GM of the Seattle Kraken); Mike Liut (president of the Octagon Hockey Agency); Joel Quenneville (second all-time in NHL coaching wins with 969); Brad Shaw (former Jackets assistant, now with John Tortorella in Philadelphia); Dave Tippett (648 coaching wins with three NHL teams). I could go on and on…

It was the cradle of coaching, executive and television talent. An incubator of vulcanized rubber.

“It doesn’t make sense for all these guys to come from one locker room. It really doesn’t,” Ferraro said. “I think we’re all proud of coming from one place. We just learned from life together. It just all fit.”

Evason centered the third line. According to some former Whalers, he was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense player who punched the clock every night. He has the same qualities as a coach.

“There’s no finesse with Dean,” Ferraro said. “I mean that in a very good way. He’s very direct. I’d be amazed if at any point someone said, ‘I didn’t know what was expected of me.’ Dean is direct.”

Daryl Reaugh played junior hockey with Evason for two years at WHL Kamloops and one year with Evason in Hartford. Reaugh, a longtime color analyst for the Dallas Stars (and several national networks), has kept a close eye on Evason’s coaching career.

“Even when he was a junior, it looked like he was going to be a coach,” Reaugh said. “He strikes me as a good mix of old-school core values, but with a new-school ability to relate to the players.”

Evason spent decades as a coach in the WHL and AHL and an assistant with the Washington Capitals before getting his chance with the Minnesota Wild in 2019. He compiled a 144-77-27 record with four playoff appearances in four-plus seasons with the Wild. Injuries, a struggling player, a desperate coach trying to pull a team out of an early-season free fall − and the Wild’s place in the seventh tier of salary cap hell − led to his firing in November.

“As a friend, I’m thrilled that he’s getting this job,” Ferraro said. “He’s a seasoned coach. I think he’s a great coach. I think the other thing that’s super important, I think, is he’s grown and learned from his time on the court, from his long time in the AHL to his time in Minnesota. He’s adapted. He’s changed his message. I hear it in the way he adds detail when he talks to the players. I hear it in the media. I see it in the way his teams play.

“One thing Columbus talks about is building a culture. A big part of that is you have to work. No shortcuts. That’s one of the things that’s easy for Dean, because that’s how he built it. That part alone will be very clear. And they’ll be organized.”

Ferraro played for Waddell when Waddell was the GM of the cash-strapped Atlanta Thrashers. Ferraro believes Waddell is a good fit in Columbus. He thinks Evason is the right guy behind the bench at this time and in this position.

“If you watch Dean when he talks, you can see how much he cares,” Ferraro said. “It’s going to be obvious in two seconds. It’s going to be obvious that it’s not about him. Players these days can smell guys who are full of evil very quickly, and they’re not going to find that in Dean. They’re not going to.”

Ferraro, who has a great talent for objectivity when analysing a match in front of a national audience, may tend towards subjectivity when talking about his old teammate. I am definitely biased here.

The search for a coach, which spanned two (almost three) full moon cycles, seemed never ending. The process seemed so Blue Jackety. Now that it is finished, it feels good.

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