Chicago: The last stop for Bowman ?

The legendary coach took on a new challlenge last week, by accepting the position of Senior advisor to the Chicago Black Hawks. Is this the last stop in hockey for Scotty Bowman ? if you look at it in the perspective that he will get a chance to work with his son, at age 74 and soon to be 75, there is no doubt, it most likely will be, of course the master will have the final word on this. As we know, his son Stanley, named after the cup he has won more than any other coach in NHL history, has been battling cancer, the same that forced Mario Lemieux to sit out part of the 1992-93 season, when his dad was coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins.

This will be Scotty Bowman’s sixth and possibly last stop in a career that has spanned over four decades. Previous stops where until recently, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Montreal and St-Louis, where it all started in fall of 1967, when then the late Lynn Patrick whow as Gm and coach with the Blues, turned the bench over to the Young Scotty Bowman. In his first three seasons as bench boss, he brought a group of rejected players to three consecutives Stanley cup finals, losing all three and not even winning a single game. Of course the obvisious question was, what could this guy do with a better team ? Shortly after beeing fired as Gm in St-Louis, he got a call from the late Sam Pollock, who was already becoming a legend and was Gm of the Montreal Canadiens, who had just won the 1971 edition of the Stanley cup playoffs. Pollock did not offer Bowman the coaching job in his initial conversation with Scotty, that would come later. In fall of 1971, the Montreal Canadiens would have two new faces, who would come to write new chapters in the history of the great franchise, Scotty Bowman and Guy Lafleur, would team up to make the 70’s editions of les Canadiens, the strongest in hockey history. In the summer following the team’s third straight cup win, Bowman signed a two year deal, but would come to regret it in a way, as the Canadiens and the Forum were to be sold from Bronfman’s to Molson Breweries of Canada (who held on to the team til they sold a majority of it to now owner George Gillett Jr. in 2001). In the agreement of the sale, Sam Pollock would no longer be Gm, but could not tell Bowman. Scotty signed the contract thinking that Pollock would be his boss. In the spring of 1979, following the Canadiens fourth straight cup win, Bowman got offers to go elsewhere, he chose to exercise the option in the contract, which still had a year left, and opted for the Buffalo Sabres.

The Years in Buffalo did not turn out to be Scotty’s best moments in hockey, which in a way where of his own doing. He gutted a team that was maybe a few players short of a Stanley cup, and started a real bad re-building process, that went contrary to what Pollock did in Montreal. Not all went bad for Bowman during his seven year tenure in the great lakes city, he did make a few good choices, as in Housley, Barrasso, who he would recommend to Craig Patrick Gm in Pittsburgh as part of the early 90’s Penguins cup winning teams. When it all ended in Buffalo, a lot of people thought that Bowman’s reputation would be tarnished, and could be the end of one best coaching careers.

After his stint with Buffalo, he went on to become an analyst on Hockey Night in Canada, until he was offered a position with the Pittsburgh Penguins in the off season of 1990. Scotty was in charge of player personel and development. The Penguins won the Stanley Cup in the spring of 1991. Bob Johnson who coached that team, fell ill during that summer, and eventually passed away before the beginning of season. Scotty was asked to step in, which he did, it was not time bring in someone new. Bowman guide the Penguins to a second straight cup in 1992. Scotty and the Penguins were not as lucky in the spring of 1993, as they bowed out in round two of the playoffs. Bowman’s former team the Montreal Canadiens, coached by former wings coach, Jacques Demers, won the prize that year.

The Detroit Red Wings offered the coaching job to Bowman in summer of 1993. Scotty went on to win three more Stanley Cups as coach, he retired in the spring of 2002, after passing his mentor Toe Blake with his 9^th cup as coach. Before joining the BlackHawks, Scotty had spent fifteen years in Detroit.

His NHL coaching and executive career have come full circle, as he is back where it all started, in the american midwest.