Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine there will be plenty of Vogelhubers – and friends – in Nationwide Arena when he has his first game behind the bench this fall, but it’s also a well-deserved appointment for a coach who has impressed every stop of the way.
Vogelhuber has spent the past eight seasons with the Monsters, moving directly into the coaching ranks at the end of his playing career. After four campaigns as an assistant in which he occasionally spelled head coach Mike Eaves as he battled health issues, Vogelhuber took over the top job with the team’s AHL affiliate in 2022.
In the past four seasons, he's cemented himself as a rising star in the coaching ranks, piloting the Monsters to three playoff appearances, series wins in all three of those campaigns and the Eastern Conference Final in 2024.
During that time, it’s always felt like a matter of not if but when Vogelhuber would graduate to the NHL coaching ranks, and the time is now. Bowness took over the Blue Jackets in January and, after hearing rave reviews of the coach, met with him this offseason and decided he deserved the opportunity.
“I was basing a lot of what I knew on all the great things I heard from everyone in the organization, from management and the other coaches and just as important the players that were down there,” said Bowness, who has tasked Vogelhuber already with starting to work on the CBJ penalty kill. “He has a lot of respect from everyone in the whole organization.
“Then after spending a little time with him, I knew he’s ready for this job. I look forward to working with him very much. He’s very confident, he’s very knowledgeable, and at some point, I’m sure he’s going to be a head coach in this league.”
It’s certainly helped that Vogelhuber has learned from some of the best, both as a player and a coach. He played under two-time Stanley Cup winner Jon Cooper, the 2025-26 Jack Adams Award winner, in the NAHL and was on the 2016 Calder Cup-winning team in Cleveland that was led by 2022 Stanley Cup champion Jared Bednar.
Since joining the CBJ organization, he worked in Cleveland under coaches John Madden and Eaves before becoming the head man, and he’s been a part of the Blue Jackets organization under such coaches as John Tortorella, longtime mentor Brad Larsen and now Bowness.
While Vogelhuber admitted he never considered coaching during his playing career, he was smart and attentive enough to pay attention, informing the way he goes about leading a squad.
“I was lucky enough to play for some pretty good (coaches), and you can tell as a player when things are done the right way,” Vogelhuber said. “Then once you see when it’s done the right way as a player, you crave it. You crave that structure, that discipline, that order in a locker room. And then when you’re not around it anymore, you know right away that this is not right.
“Whether we carry the trophy at the end of the year or we miss the playoffs, things are going to be done the right way. That’s what (players) want. Guys want that, and I took from that, you can feel it when you’re in that on a day-to-day (basis), the way you go about your business, the way coaches prepare, they way they talk to you.”
It also marks the first NHL experience for Vogelhuber, who played seven seasons in the AHL but never got the call to the show. While he was a lunchpail player who brought the effort on a nightly basis, injuries often made their mark on him, including a pair of major knee surgeries in his junior days, another knee injury suffered in a CBJ development camp and a shoulder injury during his college career.
Those injuries added up and made an impact as his career went on, and the 2007 draft pick of the Blue Jackets had to retire after the 2017-18 season. He said getting the opportunity to now coach in the NHL will be special – he's never been to Madison Square Garden, after all – but this is far from a moment where he’s ready to rest on his laurels.
“It’s funny, it wasn’t like a celebration and an ‘I made it’ moment,” he said of his hiring in Columbus. “It’s more of, ‘OK, I’m on the right track because I'm doing something right, but the work begins.’ It’s more an anxious excitement to get to work.
"Don Waddell has trusted in me and Bones has that trust in me with the job to do, and I'm not going to let them down.”
