Blue Jackets’ Rick Bowness drops unreal reaction to blowout Maple Leafs loss appeared first on ClutchPoints. Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Columbus Blue Jackets took on the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night. Columbus had a bit of motivation, as this was Kirill Marchenko’s first game against the Blue Jackets following his trade to the Maple Leafs before the season started. Despite the motivation, Rick Bowness watched his team come out quite flat.
The Maple Leafs won by a score of 6-2 on Tuesday night. Marchenko scored a goal against his former team to help in the effort. After the game, Bowness made a rather unreal admission about his team’s performance against Toronto.
“I didn’t see that coming. We had good meetings today and thought we were ready to go. We made it a little too easy on their top-end guys. They made us pay the price,” the Blue Jackets head coach said, via The Hockey Writers reporter Mark Scheig.
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Columbus got on the board first, and did so quite early. Jake Christiansen scored his first goal of the season a little more than two minutes in to make it a 1-0 game. However, Marchenko tied the game with a power-play goal four minutes later.
From there, it was all Toronto. They scored five unanswered goals to make quick work of the Blue Jackets. Columbus has fallen to 3-5-0 on the 2026-27 campaign as a result of this loss.
This was certainly not the outcome anyone wanted, especially Bowness. The veteran head coach will need to kick his team into gear once again moving forward. The Blue Jackets take the ice again on October 24 when they face the Vegas Golden Knights.