The Panther
Registered User
So, I read Ken Dryden's Scotty bio recently (somehow, it was available here in Japan!).
I was really looking forward to it, as I've long wanted to know more about Bowman and his unique and incredibly successful coaching style. Dryden I consider a kind, very intelligent, stuffy wind-bag who writes okay books and pontificates a lot. But, I figured he knows Bowman as well as anyone, and who better to write the book in 2019?
Anyway, my final score-card here is C+ to B-. Basically, it's passable but a disappointment.
For the good:
Since Bowman is not known as a storyteller, Dryden hit upon the idea of getting Scotty to evaluate historical hockey teams instead, and, in so doing, to offer his great insights into the game. Thus, as Scotty's history goes from the 1940s' Leafs right through to the Lightning and Blackhawks of today, the book dovetails its way from one great team in history to another (the "8 Greatest" teams that Bowman picked), as Scotty's life history passes from one team/city to the next, and from one era of his life to another. I did find this a brilliant way to frame the narrative, and indeed it worked really well.
I also enjoyed Dryden's take on Scotty's early life and family history. It was very adequate.
Scotty's comments on a few particular players -- Serge Savard (esp. his route to the NHL), Jacques Plante, and Mario Lemieux, for example -- were fascinating, but only for a few players (see below for the other side of this).
We all expected that Sam Pollock had made a big impact on Bowman, but I had no idea how big. This book makes that very clear, and Scotty has many great things to say about Pollock that are interesting.
For the bad:
Perhaps not surprisingly for a coach known to give nothing away, there is very little of Scotty's personality revealed here. You don't come away from the book feeling you know anything more about Bowman, frankly. I actually find him more inscrutable than ever, having read this book.
Even worse, there are very few Bowman-insights into hockey. What comments he does give are occasionally interesting... but mostly banal. He basically has nothing to say whatsoever about players like Maurice Richard (whom he regularly watched as a teen at the Forum), Bobby Orr (whom he scouted... but says nothing about that experience), Guy Lafleur (Lafleur might never have existed on evidence of this book), etc. At one point, he tries to explain Gretzky to Dryden, but (as Dryden says), Scotty has to back-track as he can't come up with accurate words to analyze him (there's also no mention at all of Bowman's having coached Gretzky briefly, or of the 1981 Canada Cup -- it's skipped over completely).
I was also expecting something along the lines of Bowman's explaining his own coaching strategy or what particular choices he made in Montreal, for example, to be so successful. But there was basically nothing about this. He talked about the strength of particular players he had... but said nothing I can recall about his own coaching philosophy. I think he said a little bit about it in regards to the Junior teams he worked with in Laval and Montreal, but only a little, and then basically nothing about the NHL. (One notable exception is for his tenure with the Penguins, as he does go into some detail about his approach and the challenges he faced as temporary coach.)
Finally, the ending of the book -- where Dryden gets Bowman to do a mock "playoff" of his 8 Greatest teams to see who the eventual "winner" is -- came off as cheesy and contrived, akin to a Shoot-out deciding a playoff game.
So, I don't know whether to recommend this book or not. Maybe my expectations were too high. It's adequate, but it never really gripped me. Maybe Dryden was too cozy with Bowman to do a really detailed analysis of his career and character. He deferred to Bowman a lot to set the tone of the chapters and eras... and Bowman wasn't giving much away. There are some eras covered (like Bowman's Buffalo tenure) where Scotty evidently had nothing much to say, so Dryden fills in the holes and writes whole pages from his own perspective, not Bowman's. So then it feels contrived, like some parts are Bowman's and some parts are Dryden's.
A difficult book.
I was really looking forward to it, as I've long wanted to know more about Bowman and his unique and incredibly successful coaching style. Dryden I consider a kind, very intelligent, stuffy wind-bag who writes okay books and pontificates a lot. But, I figured he knows Bowman as well as anyone, and who better to write the book in 2019?
Anyway, my final score-card here is C+ to B-. Basically, it's passable but a disappointment.
For the good:
Since Bowman is not known as a storyteller, Dryden hit upon the idea of getting Scotty to evaluate historical hockey teams instead, and, in so doing, to offer his great insights into the game. Thus, as Scotty's history goes from the 1940s' Leafs right through to the Lightning and Blackhawks of today, the book dovetails its way from one great team in history to another (the "8 Greatest" teams that Bowman picked), as Scotty's life history passes from one team/city to the next, and from one era of his life to another. I did find this a brilliant way to frame the narrative, and indeed it worked really well.
I also enjoyed Dryden's take on Scotty's early life and family history. It was very adequate.
Scotty's comments on a few particular players -- Serge Savard (esp. his route to the NHL), Jacques Plante, and Mario Lemieux, for example -- were fascinating, but only for a few players (see below for the other side of this).
We all expected that Sam Pollock had made a big impact on Bowman, but I had no idea how big. This book makes that very clear, and Scotty has many great things to say about Pollock that are interesting.
For the bad:
Perhaps not surprisingly for a coach known to give nothing away, there is very little of Scotty's personality revealed here. You don't come away from the book feeling you know anything more about Bowman, frankly. I actually find him more inscrutable than ever, having read this book.
Even worse, there are very few Bowman-insights into hockey. What comments he does give are occasionally interesting... but mostly banal. He basically has nothing to say whatsoever about players like Maurice Richard (whom he regularly watched as a teen at the Forum), Bobby Orr (whom he scouted... but says nothing about that experience), Guy Lafleur (Lafleur might never have existed on evidence of this book), etc. At one point, he tries to explain Gretzky to Dryden, but (as Dryden says), Scotty has to back-track as he can't come up with accurate words to analyze him (there's also no mention at all of Bowman's having coached Gretzky briefly, or of the 1981 Canada Cup -- it's skipped over completely).
I was also expecting something along the lines of Bowman's explaining his own coaching strategy or what particular choices he made in Montreal, for example, to be so successful. But there was basically nothing about this. He talked about the strength of particular players he had... but said nothing I can recall about his own coaching philosophy. I think he said a little bit about it in regards to the Junior teams he worked with in Laval and Montreal, but only a little, and then basically nothing about the NHL. (One notable exception is for his tenure with the Penguins, as he does go into some detail about his approach and the challenges he faced as temporary coach.)
Finally, the ending of the book -- where Dryden gets Bowman to do a mock "playoff" of his 8 Greatest teams to see who the eventual "winner" is -- came off as cheesy and contrived, akin to a Shoot-out deciding a playoff game.
So, I don't know whether to recommend this book or not. Maybe my expectations were too high. It's adequate, but it never really gripped me. Maybe Dryden was too cozy with Bowman to do a really detailed analysis of his career and character. He deferred to Bowman a lot to set the tone of the chapters and eras... and Bowman wasn't giving much away. There are some eras covered (like Bowman's Buffalo tenure) where Scotty evidently had nothing much to say, so Dryden fills in the holes and writes whole pages from his own perspective, not Bowman's. So then it feels contrived, like some parts are Bowman's and some parts are Dryden's.
A difficult book.
