For more than three decades, Scotty Bowman amassed the greatest coaching resumé in hockey history, racking up 1,244 wins and nine Stanley Cups, both NHL records.
And for even longer than that, Bowman has watched, scouted, analyzed, managed, thought about, commentated on and obsessed over the game, accumulating knowledge, memories and a perspective perhaps unmatched in the sport.
In “Scotty: A Hockey Life Like No Other,” author Ken Dryden chronicles Bowman’s journey through the game and asks his former coach, with whom he teamed to win five Cups with the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, to draw on all those memories with a unique twist.
The twist is that Bowman is asked to pick the eight best NHL teams he has ever seen, which range from the 1950s to the 2010s, organize them into a fantasy playoff of sorts, then imagine how such a tournament might play out, culminating with a single team hoisting the make-believe “Scotty Cup.”
While the format of the biography may be atypical, there is nothing typical about either the writer or his subject. Shortly after graduating from Cornell in 1969, Dryden became the Canadiens goalie and won a remarkable six Cups in his eight seasons (with the first coming before Bowman had become coach).
In the middle of that run, Dryden took a sabbatical, sitting out the 1973-74 season to article at a Toronto law firm, a precursor to his walking away for good in 1979, just shy of his 32nd birthday. His post-hockey life has seen him practice law, work as a TV color commentator for Olympic hockey, serve as president of the Maple Leafs, enter Canadian politics, teach, and of course, write books.
But back to this book and its quirky format, which I think succeeds in the way that it elicits memories from Bowman across such a broad spectrum of players, teams, eras and playing styles, and subsequently allows Dryden to both tell Bowman’s story and let Bowman tell stories.
Bowman was born in 1933 and grew up in the Montreal suburb of Verdun. He scored a standing-room-only season pass to Canadiens games at the Montreal Forum in the 1940s, watching Canadiens’ star Maurice “Rocket” Richard and the Red Wings’ fabled Production Line in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.
His own playing career – he was a solid amateur player but never a top prospect – led to a brief stint with a junior team in the Canadiens system before he suffered a career-ending injury. But that led to an opportunity to join the Montreal organization and study as a minor hockey coach and executive under early hockey icons Sam Pollock and Toe Blake.
When the NHL emerged from the quaint Original Six era to double in size in 1966, Bowman became an assistant to coach and GM Lynn Patrick with the expansion St. Louis Blues. Patrick resigned 16 games into the Blues inaugural season, making Bowman a head coach in the NHL for the first time at 34. Bowman would win the all-expansion West Division in each of his first three years, earning the right to get clobbered in the Stanley Cup Finals by the Canadiens (twice) and Bruins.
In 1971, Bowman returned home to take the reins in Montreal, guiding the Canadiens’ aforementioned dynasty in the ‘70s. After the Canadiens’ fourth-straight Cup in 1979 and his fifth overall, Bowman realized that, with the team aging and his mentor Pollock no longer around to secure players for him, it was time for a new challenge.
After leaving Montreal, Bowman made stops in Buffalo and Pittsburgh, oscillating between management and coaching positions, sometimes doing both jobs at the same time, thinking he preferred to be a GM, but often being pressured by fans and ownership to coach. He even spent several years away from the team side altogether, filling his time as a commentator on CBC’s “Hockey Night in Canada.”
His window to contend in Buffalo had been slammed shut by the Islanders dynasty, which won four straight Cups from 1980-83, and the budding Wayne Gretzky-led Oilers dynasty, which followed the Islanders by winning five Cups in seven years.
In Pittsburgh, he had signed on as director of player personnel, but after Bob Johnson’s untimely illness and death, was again forced behind the bench, coaching the Penguins to their second of back-to-back Cups with Mario Lemieux in 1992.
Bowman arrived in Detroit in 1993, taking over a Steve Yzerman-led Red Wings team that had suffered a string of frustrating early-round playoff defeats. The playoff foibles initially continued, with the Wings stumbling in the first round, getting swept in the Stanley Cup Finals, then eventually breaking through with back-to-back Cups in 1997-98, then a third Cup in 2001-02 with a star-studded team that would cement Bowman’s legacy.
As a young Red Wings fan in early ‘90s Detroit, I remember this era well, in particular the angst-ridden times that preceded the Cup triumphs, namely the debate over whether Yzerman possessed the “it” factor required to win championships. Yzerman’s name swirled in trade rumors, with one highly publicized potential deal shipping him to his hometown Ottawa Senators for young Russian star Alexei Yashin.
“I said to him, ‘You’ve got to play a lot differently if this team is going to win,’” Bowman recalls telling Yzerman. Bowman remembers the always understated Yzerman taking the discussion in stride and indeed becoming a model two-way player for the betterment of the team.
(In addition to being a three-time Cup winner, Yzerman would end up playing more than 1,300 games as the Wings’ captain, a record in North American professional sports, and now serves as Detroit’s GM.)
Local media stories at the time indicated that Yzerman fumed when he found out about the trade talks. And while this turbulence may have been dissected in detail in a traditional biography – with Yzerman and perhaps rival GMs who were involved in trade talks being asked for their recollections – the details of how the drama played out are glossed over in the book.
While it would have been great for Dryden to peel back the onion on those bumpy, uncertain times – in Detroit and at other stops along Bowman’s journey – unfortunately, that was never the nature of the book, and hockey fans will have to accept it.
After officially retiring from coaching but remaining as an adviser with the Wings in the 2000s, Bowman collected another Cup as an executive, then moved to the Blackhawks and served as an adviser to his son Stan, who was Chicago’s GM, and was a part of three more Cup-winning teams with the Hawks.
And that mock playoff?
Bowman’s picks for his best eight teams of all time were, in chronological order: the 1951-52 Red Wings, 1955-56 Canadiens, 1962-63 Maple Leafs, 1976-77 Canadiens, 1981-82 Islanders, 1983-84 Oilers, 2001-02 Red Wings and 2014-15 Blackhawks.
In a surprise move, Bowman pits his 2001-02 Red Wings against Dryden’s and his 1976-77 Canadiens in the first round – two teams that seemed like legit candidates to meet in the next round, if not the finals. Although that edition of the Wings featured what will likely be 10 Hall of Famers when the dust settles, Bowman tabs the Canadiens to advance.
Controversial? Not really. While the Wings did win the Presidents’ Trophy by 15 points, they had a relatively modest plus-64 goal differential, especially compared to the Canadiens’ staggering plus-216 total. Montreal piled up 132 points, dominating a league watered down from two recent rounds of expansion.
Those Canadiens were buoyed by Hart Trophy (MVP) and Art Ross Trophy (leading scorer) winner Guy LaFleur; 60-goal scorer Steve Shutt; three Hall of Fame defensemen in Larry Robinson, Serge Savard and Guy Lapointe; and Vezina Trophy (best goalie) winner Dryden between the pipes – an embarrassment of riches.
In addition to the 1976-77 Canadiens, the other teams to advance to the next round are the 1951-52 Red Wings, 1962-63 Maple Leafs and 1983-84 Oilers.
In the finals, Montreal meets the other Red Wings team, led by Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Sid Abel of Production Line lore. In a series that Bowman surmises would go the full seven games, the Canadiens prevail to hoist the “Scotty Cup.”
While biographies written about sports legends are plentiful, rarely, if ever, has such a book been written by another legend in that sport. That fact, combined with Dryden’s easy writing style and Bowman’s seemingly limitless memory make this a book worth any serious hockey fan’s time.
“Scotty Cup” Playoffs
1951-52 Red Wings over 1955-56 Canadiens
1962-63 Maple Leafs over 2014-15 Blackhawks
1983-84 Oilers over 1981-82 Islanders
1976-77 Canadiens over 2001-02 Red Wings
1951-52 Red Wings over 1962-63 Maple Leafs
1976-77 Canadiens over 1983-84 Oilers
1976-77 Canadiens over 1951-52 Red Wings
