ONE-ON-ONE WITH SCOTTY BOWMAN
I am sitting in Scotty Bowman’s living room during the NHL trade deadline.
The television is on mute and Sarasota sunlight is filtering across photos of grandchildren, a miniature Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup, an autographed copy of Scotty by Ken Dryden. The Gulf of Mexico is lapping the white sand coast of Siesta Key in plain sight. You would think that this is the making of a peaceful story on retirement, but as idyllic as a condo on a barrier island may sound, Scotty Bowman is far from retired. An encyclopedia of world hockey past, present and future, he’s the definition of having one’s head in the game—not to mention the fact that at 86 years old, he’s well into his tenth season as Senior Advisor to the Chicago Blackhawks.
Scotty Bowman. Photo credit: St. Louis Post.
I came to Sarasota to discuss Bowman’s history with the Soviets—a relationship that spanned decades and defections, political rivalries and back-to-back championships. Instead, he is punctuating Russian memories with real-time commentary on the NHL’s latest trades. More than one move is a nothing deal, draft picks are by no means sure bets (he has studied this at-length), and Jean-Gabriel Pageau to the Islanders is significant. We pause once or twice so Scotty can update his physical therapist friend, a Rangers fan, on the Chris Kreider extension. He is surprised that the phone is not ringing more, but he suspects that it soon will.
While Bowman has long been associated with the phrase, “There is nothing so uncertain as a sure thing,” here is something of which I am fairly sure: the past tense is no place for a nine-time Stanley Cup-winning coach. We can drift back to memory lane for a time, but Bowman is not the kind of eighty-something with waterfront property on a bygone era. When you consider the titles he won, the teams he coached for and against, the stars he molded and the people he met—you would hardly begrudge rosters and champagne toasts blurring together. But they don’t. Bowman rattles off names, years and achievements with lightning dexterity—pausing every so often to gather my thoughts on a Russian player, glancing hastily at the television, layering forty-six years of coaching wisdom over a rapidly-evolving present (and with mere hours to go until the trade deadline passes, NHL Network is cutting between analysts with gusto).
I thought about editing this narrative to its sole intention: a conversation on Anatoli Tarasov and the legacy of Soviet hockey. But to delete those occasional, golden flecks of the present would be to delete the essence of what makes Scotty so singular.
Gillian Kemmerer (GK): Can you describe your first encounter with Soviet hockey?
Scotty Bowman (SB): My first job in hockey was in Ottawa with a junior team. I was young. The Russians…I imagine I saw them play in North America for the first time in November 1956 or ’57. I think it was ’56. I don't remember many of the players, but I do remember two of them: [Nikolai] Sologubov and Ivan Tregubov. Two big defensemen.
GK: You were coaching the Junior Canadiens who had been moved to Ottawa.
SB: Correct. We had the best players from the province of Quebec, mostly all Quebecers—a very good team. Maybe four or five of them were going to play for the Montreal Canadiens. The Russian National Team came over and they were men. We saw them in the morning skate and they had holes in their stockings, they didn't have good equipment.
We had a really unique arena in Ottawa too. There was no straightaway in the back—it was more like an egg shape. It was hard to play on, so we would beat teams because that was our home rink.
Now, we were all under 20 and they were in their mid-20s and higher. They beat us 10 to 1. You talk about shocked—we were shocked. We had another game coming up with them in Montreal.
Tarasov. Photo credit: TASS.
GK: Anatoli Tarasov wrote a great deal about his impressions of Canada on that tour.
SB: He was the head coach at the time. Now that was midweek. The following weekend, we were going to play them again in Montreal at The Forum. I was the coach, and the manager of the team was Sam Pollock, who later became the Montreal Canadiens’ manager. He was very unhappy. The next best team in Canada was in Toronto with all Maple Leafs prospects. Even though it was a rival, he convinced the Toronto Maple Leafs, "Can we take..." Oh, look at this!
John Davidson announces on TV that New York Rangers players Igor Shestyorkin and Pavel Buchnevich have been in a car accident.
SB: Isn’t it terrible though? The Russians have had a lot of car accidents.
GK: On your Detroit team alone—Fetisov, Kozlov, Konstantinov…
SB: [Picks up the phone and dials a friend, who is a New York Rangers fan] Oh my goodness, they just had JD. Shestyorkin and Buchnevich got in a car accident last night. Shestyorkin fractured a rib; the minimum is two weeks. Buchnevich is day-to-day. It's on the NHL Network right now. In fact, they're talking about the contract. Kreider got six and a half. It must have been a bad accident. He fractured a rib. Okay? Bye. [Hangs up - doesn’t skip a beat.]
We played the next weekend in Montreal. We brought in three or four of the top players from Toronto. It was a decent game, we lost 6-3. Men against boys—it goes to show you.
GK: The Junior Canadiens faced off against the Soviets a few years later and won, but Jacques Plante was in net.
SB: That was either '64 or '65. Jacques Plante had been retired from the Rangers for a couple of years and was working for the [Molson] Brewery. He called the manager and said, "I never had a chance to play against the Russians. I'd like to try it.” The game was in maybe early December, and he practiced about four or five times with us. He was probably about 37. We did add a couple of minor pro players. We had a very good junior team, young guys, and we won with 30 seconds to go, 2 to 1. [Plante] stood on his head.
GK: I read in your biography that he coached the defense for that game.
SB: He went on the board and said that the Russians never shot the puck away a lot. If they shot the puck, it was usually in an empty net. They always wanted to pass it around. He explained to the defensemen that if there was a situation where they had to protect two guys, to make sure that they couldn’t pass. He said, "I'll take the puck and make sure that the other guy can't score.”
But no, that [Soviet] team in '56, I remember it like it was yesterday. They had hardly good pants, their sticks…they didn't have what they have now. They were one of the first teams, and I got to know them.
Tretiak & Dryden. Photo credit: Montreal Canadiens.
GK: Ken Dryden referred to the New Year’s Eve game of 1975 [Montreal Canadiens v. Red Army] as his greatest regret in hockey. He later told Anatoli Tarasov that the Soviets’ passing game was disorienting.
SB: We just didn't see that in the NHL. We didn't see the crossover or cross-ice passing, which you see a lot of now. The goalies in those days were not subject to having to move from side-to-side. The guy would come in on the side, and you had to get the right positioning. Plante was an angle goalie. If he knew the guy was a shooter, he wouldn't give him any room. If he knew the guy might deke or make plays, he would back up. See, he grew up in the six team era and he only played two or three years later, but he knew all the shooters. He was really a very observant and quiet guy. We weren't used to that.
Now, I think Dryden was disappointed because he had played in the Summit Series with Tony [Esposito] in '72. He didn't get a lot of shots that game. The hardest thing is that there are some goalies who get 40 or 45 shots and they stop 41 or 42, and they look really good, but they're in a zone. They're so used to getting shots.
GK: If I’m not mistaken, Dryden only got 13 shots in the New Year’s game.
SB: We had such a powerhouse team all through the last four or five years of that run, so Dryden didn't get a lot of work. He'd get some quality shots on [an opposing team’s] power play. He was a remarkable goalie to keep his focus. It's not easy for a goalie…you’re a big guy and not getting a lot of work, then all of a sudden you've got to make a spectacular save. I think he was more-or-less disappointed. I think he felt that Tretiak stood on his head, and he was only about 23 at the time. I’m pretty sure Anatoli Tarasov came to the ’75 game.
WATCH: The 1975 New Year’s clash — Montreal Canadiens v. Red Army
GK: He didn’t coach that team, though.
SB: No, that was Konstantin Loktev. The interpreter for the Russian team was a big, tall man. I forget his name. He's the one that proposed to me: "Would you like to have a sit down and talk to Anatoli Tarasov?” I said, "Sure." So [Tarasov] watched us practice and the interpreter came with him. We had maybe seven drills that practice, seven or eight.
Tarasov said, “Well, I liked three of the drills, but four of them…" In those days, the Russian players all participated in drills—they were moving all over the place. Sometimes they would have more than two goalies. There would be a third goalie in the corner. On the other hand, we used to have shooting drills. Guys would line up, but [at times] they were standing still.
He liked two or three drills, and he liked some of the guys on the team. He watched us practice and he said, "Your defense is so mobile." And we did have mobile defenseman— [Larry] Robinson, [Guy] LaPointe and [Serge] Savard.
Tarasov said, "If Lafleur is a lot like some of our players, he probably gets confused in his own zone." And I said, "Yeah, that's right. He doesn't know whether he should be covering the point or if he should be coming down.”
So he said, “I’ll tell you what I’d like to see you try. When your defensemen get the puck and it's clean cut that they can make a play, tell Lafleur to start leaving the zone and make sure that he takes the eyes away from that left defenseman who wants to come in and play offense. He sees Lafleur passing him by, tell him to go out past his own blue line, and then maybe cut across. The other defenseman will be wondering who's going to take him. Basically the worst you're going to end up with is, instead of being five-on-five in your own end and having Lafleur as one of the five defenders, have them get out of the neutral zone and then you'll only have four-on-four. You're better off with four-on-four without him."
Tarasov at the 1971 World Championships. Photo credit: TASS
GK: So did you try it?
SB: I did it in practice a few times. I think it helped us a bit because with Lafleur and Shutt, we had such a good defense and would spring the zone a lot. We would anticipate. Not a lot of NHL players played like that, but the Russians did. Their defensemen were always passing to each other, making the long pass. See, that was before they took the red line out. They had that down pretty pat.
We tried it for a few practices, but given how successful we were in our own league, I think the players felt like, "What's he trying to do now? We're doing great!”
GK: You can hardly blame them for feeling that way. Lafleur and Shutt were amazing together.
SB: Lafleur and Shutt were terrific in-tandem. They played together for about eight years, and so many times they ended up with two-on-ones. Lafleur could make plays too. He wasn't just a shooter. He could pass the puck, something like an [Artemi] Panarin.
Anyway, I had a nice hour with [Tarasov] and he opened up. He was a real strategist. People think [the Soviets] just played on instincts, but their instincts were also plays. They always passed it laterally back. They'd spread out as soon as they got the puck—that’s what Fetisov did with Kasatonov. They were so good together.
GK: Everything was like chess to Tarasov. He'd even trained with the chess champions of the Soviet Union.
SB: You're right. He was more ahead of most people because he was an innovator.
GK: I have to bring up Fred Shero here. His family fled the USSR for Canada, but he had a relationship with the Soviets and was in Russia all of the time. He used some of their drills with the Philadelphia Flyers.
SB: Yeah, he went there in the summers.
GK: I am curious if you saw any glimmers of Soviet strategy in how the Broad Street Bullies played?
SB: Shero had this one designed play that was hard to defend. He’d tell his guys to throw it around the boards and have a battle up near the blue line. They had pretty good-sized wingers and they'd try to get a one-on-one with the defenseman. Bobby Clarke and [Rick] MacLeish would hover around that area and they would pick up the puck and just get up to the center line. They'd miss the goalie and throw it so that [the puck] would end up diagonally on the left-hand side of the rink, and their left winger at that time was going in to press down, and the defenseman would follow up. It was hard to get the puck out of your own end because they had a really big forecheck, and their defensemen came in, pinched in. Most teams were afraid to pinch in because they might get breakaways. If [the Flyers] got in your end, boy you were in a lot of trouble.
GK: At that point in time, it would have been so hard to imagine Russians playing in the NHL—let alone the five-man unit you constructed in Detroit.
SB: You know, we lost in Detroit one year because of Igor Larionov. [San Jose] didn't have a “Russian Five,” but they had a five-man unit. He had a defenseman also from the former USSR, Sandis Ozoliņš [commonly anglicized as Sandis Ozolinsh]. Johan Garpenlov was a Swede, and he had [Sergei] Makarov with him [from the infamous Soviet KLM line].
They were an expansion team, but they beat us. Igor was the one who controlled everything. He orchestrated how they should do it.
The Russian Five. Photo credit: Forbes.
GK: The Soviet Union had a different philosophy with regard to defense. Did you have any difficulties incorporating the Detroit Russian Five when they were stationed on North American-dominant lines?
SB: We had Vladimir Konstantinov, and then we had Slava Fetisov. Of course, they were used to being defensemen. Many of the Russian players that came over at that time, they didn't pay a lot of attention [to defense]. They weren't like the North Americans. The face-offs weren't their bag. They didn't really concentrate on it, but Sergei Fedorov was good on face-offs. Sergei was strong, he was a big guy. He was an unusual Soviet player because he was good defensively without the puck. Most of the Soviets, they never had to play defense…
GK: As you’ve said, their defense was largely possession.
SB: And eventually, we used that Russian system. We played with the two defensemen down low and Sergei played up higher because he was a good skater, and so did Kozlov. When we started them, they scored some spectacular goals. I was always leery that the other teams might figure them out. The way that they used to play, all of a sudden the puck was rolling around in the neutral zone and the guy that would get a breakaway was Konstantinov.
Fetisov, when he was in his prime, used to go up all the time. When we got him, he could go sometimes and he was dangerous, but he more or less stayed on defense. He wanted to stay back.
GK: When did you first see Konstantinov play?
SB: I saw him play around '90 or '91; [Eric] Lindros was playing for Canada before he joined the NHL. Konstantinov was playing right wing for Russia on the National Team. I noticed him, and a guy I always thought was one of the most talented players that ever came out of Russia—[Valeri] Kamensky. He broke his leg, but he still was a very highly skilled player. He beat us in Colorado one year when he came back from an injury. There was another player in the '50s or maybe late ‘50s that I saw play. I always put him near the top of my list—Anatoli Firsov.
But no, that Russian Five, we were always fearful. I wanted to use them at opportune times rather than have somebody figure them out. Of course the second year, Vladdy got his injury. It was really a tragic thing.
GK: I still get choked up watching The Russian Five. I cannot believe it ever happened.
SB: He was such a great player. He might even have gotten some votes for the Norris Trophy. Vladimir had a good shot and he was really aggressive.
The Russian Five reunited. Photo credit: Traverse City Film Festival.
GK: Do you ever get updates on how he’s doing?
SB: Not this year, but I know that he's improved a bit because he's determined. There's a nurse that has taken over and looks after him all the time because he needs help.
I haven't been around Detroit much, but the other person who was a very good friend of mine was Sergei Mnatsakanov [the Red Wings’ masseur, also critically injured in the limo crash]. It was a terrible part of our career, not to be able to celebrate the first Cup. You know what I mean?
GK: I can barely imagine.
SB: [It happened] within a week. It was terrible.
We had a defense coach, Dave Lewis, and he got along pretty good with [the Russians]. We would bring Vladdy in and describe things, and even though he could speak English, he’d pretend that he couldn’t. He did it for a whole year. He did it intentionally. [Laughs] We didn't find out until later, and somehow we called him George. Georgie.
[Note: I recently read an article from 1997 that says the name George came from “Curious George,” a cartoon monkey that the players felt resembled Vladdy. He wasn’t sure if he liked the nickname very much!]
He was a wonderful guy. Even now if I see him, I'll say, “Remember the first year, when you didn't cooperate much?" He laughs about it because he knew what he was doing. He wasn't a talkative guy, but he knew what he was going to do.
GK: How much did you coach the Russians?
SB: Hardly. One year, we were practicing the power play—and I didn’t play [the Russians] on the power play for some reason. I don’t know.
I was getting upset with the team. They were not shooting the puck, and then I made them shoot it. If they shot at the wrong time, I would blow the whistle. So [Igor Larionov] says to me, “What about trying us on the power play?" I was frustrated with our other guys, so I said, "Yeah, maybe we should.”
Igor called the other Russians over. I think he must have told them, "Let's not take any foolish shots." They were out there practicing for maybe 35 seconds. They got to the end zone, they're moving the puck around, and all of a sudden I think they should be shooting and they don't shoot—so I blew the whistle. I said, "Look, it's the same as we had before. Now you're killing the penalty for the other team, Igor!”
He goes, ”We did it as a joke. I told them not to shoot.”
I used to talk to Slava [Fetisov], because he was always saying, "What can we do? Is there anything you think we can do?" And I said, "Look, I don't know what you guys are doing, but whatever you're doing…keep doing it." [Laughs] That’s what I used to tell him. Just keep doing what you're going to do.
GK: One part of your biography that really interested me was how closely Fedorov tracked his TOI.
SB: I liked Sergei. His father was a coach, Viktor. I think he was trying to protect [Sergei], and he sometimes complained that [Sergei] wasn't playing enough. We had a great team, you see. I used to tell him that the time on ice wasn't always accurate. It was tough on Sergei because we had a good team.
Then one year, when we had two defensemen injured, I thought about it and I said, "Sergei, I need you to try defense." He could skate backward like anybody else could skate forward—he was such a powerful skater. I put him with Lidström at the beginning. After about a game or two, I didn't have to put him with Lidström. He would've been making the All-Star Game as a defenseman. He played for about a month against good teams, and his ice time went up to 20. He was always looking to get 20. Sometimes he’d play 18 minutes, but I think it bothered his father a lot.
I played him on defense, he took to it, and then when we got the injured guys back, I put him back up at center. The last year that we got into the playoffs, Yzerman was starting to get injured a bit. His knee was not 100%. I put Sergei at center, Yzerman went to right-wing and Shanahan to left-wing. Nobody could stop them.
I was talking to Wayne Gretzky once after I left Detroit. Sergei challenged him one year for the scoring, and it was real close. He said, "I could never play defense. Neither could Mario, neither could Jagr." Jagr was one of the better players in the league. He said, "It's amazing. Very few players in the league today could play forward and defense of equal." If I had to play him on defense the rest of his career at that time, he just was a natural. He was so good defensively, but he was also a threat.
I said, "Sergei, you can come from behind. You're still going to get points." I don't know how many he got [as a defenseman], but he was a good player.
Tretiak. Photo credit: Montreal Gazette.
GK: I have to bring up Vladislav Tretiak, who you coached against in his prime! He told me that he thinks the best goaltender in the world is Sergei Bobrovsky. Do you agree?
SB: I'm not that sure now. I mean, they say [Bobrovsky] is a hard worker, but there are some funny goals that squeak by him. I don't know how they get in there. He makes some great saves, but the guy here—Andrei Vasilevskiy—he likes to practice. That's one thing that's good. I know when Yzerman was [in Tampa], they had Bishop, who was a good goalie. But Steve said, “It’s not even close." He said that Vasilevskiy was the first guy on the ice as a kid. He was always practicing, and he stayed long. He thought he was going to eventually be [the starter] and that's why they traded Ben Bishop. But Vasilevskiy seems to be calm. He's got size and he's very athletic. He doesn't get many games where he can have an off-night. He get shots. It's not like a goalie that's well protected.
What Vasilevskiy does so well is that he doesn't give rebounds. He's very good on the rebound control, even shots that come in from a distance. The puck stops right at his goal pads. It's amazing. He traps a lot and doesn't catch everything. He stops play a lot, anything around the net—I’ve never seen it. I think it's a strategy because they've got two players on every line now that can take face-offs. One's better than the other, but they're both pretty good. I don't know what kind of a goalie he'd be if he got 15 or 20 shots in a game.
GK: With Tretiak at the helm of the Russian Hockey Federation, it’s no coincidence that more goalie talent is coming out of Russia. The import goalie restrictions, Tretiak attending the camps himself…
SB: I talked to Igor Larionov occasionally after the [World Juniors] Tournament. He was telling me about that young goalie, [Yaroslav] Askarov.
GK: Hard to believe that he is only 17.
SB: In that tournament, they took him in and out…and then he wasn't as good as he had been before. [Igor] still has confidence that he will be a good goalie. There's a lot of good players in Russia. It's a big country. When you think of Russia, the players don't play baseball. They play soccer. They don't play basketball much—it’s not a career.
The NHL Network leads with J.G. Pageau’s move to the New York Islanders.
SB: That’s the biggest trade—the one from Ottawa.
GK: Pageau.
SB: He’s a good player. They got a bunch of picks for him. But like I said, I did a survey of the 2014 NHL Draft. I looked at all 30 teams six years ago, so the players are now about 23-24. Anybody that was drafted at that time has pretty well reached their peak. Do you know when you go to each team in the draft, hardly anybody got two [players] that played 50 or 60 games? Most teams got one guy out of seven picks. I think it’s getting better now because there are more kids playing and we know Europe a lot better. But when they give all these picks away at this time, they sound dramatic.
GK: The upcoming draft will spotlight a highly-anticipated player from Quebec—Alexis Lafrenière.
SB: He's a special player, yeah. They said he's a generation type player. He's much better than anybody else. There's nobody close to him.
GK: How might you compare him to last year’s number one, Jack Hughes?
SB: That's a good comparison. He's not big yet. I think he's bigger though than Hughes.
It's always tempting to keep young players, and Hughes will be good. He's a very talented player. He's fast, he's got good vision, he's got good hands, but he hasn't built his body.
GK: Slava Fetisov and Sergei Fedorov have both lamented the fact that kids don’t grow up playing in their backyards anymore. They argue that it stunts creativity, makes the sport more prohibitive.
SB: Yes, it’s entitlement too. It's a problem. It's an expensive sport to play. The kids compete and then they get to the USA Hockey Development Team in Plymouth and they think that they're better than all the rest. They go to college for a year or two, then they go to the NHL. It's not the same as bringing up the player and grinding it out. It's not the same now.
The Miracle on Ice. Photo credit: Sports Illustrated.
GK: Speaking of USA Hockey—this week was the 40th anniversary of the Miracle On Ice at Lake Placid. Where were you?
SB: I was at the game! I was with Buffalo at the time, my wife and I went to Lake Placid. It was an amazing time because there was hardly any snow—there was mud all over. Right in the middle of the winter, it was a freak [season]. Buffalo had four of the players on the team that we had drafted, all college players at the time. One was really good, we drafted him at the eleventh pick—a defenseman named Mike Ramsey. He was a very good defenseman, and he was the youngest on the team. We had just drafted him in August, and he played as a freshman at the University of Minnesota. We were trying to sign some of them and were with those guys [in Lake Placid], watching them play.
GK: So what was the magnitude of the miracle, in your estimation?
SB: I mean, I saw them get whipped. I went to Madison Square Garden when [the US & Soviets] played in December. They lost 10 to 3. But they took out Tretiak…
GK: Tikhonov said it was the greatest mistake he ever made.
SB: They must have thought that it was going to be easy. It really was a miracle.
Scotty Bowman’s birthday celebration in Montreal. Photo credit: NHL.com.
