Scotty Bowman, the motivator?

[struckbyaparkedcar]

I'm taking an Organizational Behavior course, and one of the assignments is a paper on the topic of my choice so long as it coincides with something we covered in class.

Long story short, I really want to write about Scotty Bowman, and how he motivated his players. Unfortunately, I haven't found all that much in-depth stuff about his interactions with his team besides the quote about hating him for 364 days out of the year and a bunch of cursory biographies.

There's always a ton of great information being posted here, and I'm not asking the board to do my homework for me or anything of that nature, but if anyone knows of some articles that talk about Bowman's methods of motivation it would be great.

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[jkrx]

I'm taking an Organizational Behavior course, and one of the assignments is a paper on the topic of my choice so long as it coincides with something we covered in class.

Long story short, I really want to write about Scotty Bowman, and how he motivated his players. Unfortunately, I haven't found all that much in-depth stuff about his interactions with his team besides the quote about hating him for 364 days out of the year and a bunch of cursory biographies.

There's always a ton of great information being posted here, and I'm not asking the board to do my homework for me or anything of that nature, but if anyone knows of some articles that talk about Bowman's methods of motivation it would be great.

His motivation is play as a I want you to play and win or play somewhere else.

 

[Nighthawks]

Ken Dryden's book The Game has a lot of good tidbits about Bowman. Things he'd say to players or how they thought he was getting in their head. Might be a good place to start.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Ken Dryden's book The Game has a lot of good tidbits about Bowman. Things he'd say to players or how they thought he was getting in their head. Might be a good place to start.

I second this. The Game is the definitive insider account of Bowman's motivational techniques.

Bottom line, he knew which guys were going to deliver and put them in a position to do so. If you weren't getting it done, he made no apologies for pulling the rug out from under you. So the players knew each shift was an audition, and nobody was close enough to him personally to influence his decisions outside their performance.

 

[Dexter Colt]

Before game 7 of the conference finals in 2002 Bowman followed Dick Irvin Jr's advice and tried to get his guys to relax by getting them to laugh. Scotty shared something of a joke with the team, the Wings won 7-0.

That could have easily just been Roy and the Avs choking, as Roy already had a mistake that cost them the game 6. Roy allowed a couple of early goals and they never recovered.

Prior to game 6 of the conference finals, again against the Avs, Bowman basically told his team that if they don't come up with the game of their lives, they'll always regret it. The Red Wings won 3-1 and outshot Colorado 41-16.

I think there was more to him than just "I want you to play and win or play somewhere else". Sure, players might have not always liked him, but he sure knew what buttons to push. Steve Duchesne put it somewhere along the lines of "Some times you just wanted to strangle him, and other times you just wanted to hug and kiss him".

My examples are taken from the DVD Detroit Red Wings: A Celebration of Champions.

 

[jkrx]

Before game 7 of the conference finals in 2002 Bowman followed Dick Irvin Jr's advice and tried to get his guys to relax by getting them to laugh. Scotty shared something of a joke with the team, the Wings won 7-0.

That could have easily just been Roy and the Avs choking, as Roy already had a mistake that cost them the game 6. Roy allowed a couple of early goals and they never recovered.

Prior to game 6 of the conference finals, again against the Avs, Bowman basically told his team that if they don't come up with the game of their lives, they'll always regret it. The Red Wings won 3-1 and outshot Colorado 41-16.

I think there was more to him than just "I want you to play and win or play somewhere else". Sure, players might have not always liked him, but he sure knew what buttons to push. Steve Duchesne put it somewhere along the lines of "Some times you just wanted to strangle him, and other times you just wanted to hug and kiss him".

My examples are taken from the DVD Detroit Red Wings: A Celebration of Champions.

My example is ofcourse only one side of it. As you say, he used various tactics to get his team going and thats what makes a great coach. He doesn't have a narrow mind to do thing just one way (like Keenan) but tackles problems differently. He is however a pretty cold and distant coach.

 

[overg]

It's pretty amazing how much Bowman did *not* explain his methods, even to his own players. For instance, it was clear as day that Scotty was a firm believer in "you should be able to play in any line combination, at any time." Thus, he mixed up his lines constantly during the regular season.

Drove a lot of his players absolutely bonkers, as they could never figure out why they were suddenly playing with fourth liners when they were leading the team in points. But after watching him continue to juggle for a number of years, it became clear as day that Bowman 1) wanted to know every possible option he had available as far as line combinations, so that he could utilize different combinations to get different results depending on need, and 2) wanted his players to always be ready for injuries which might throw line combinations out of whack.

As far as how he actually got his players to buy into this "madness," he simply did what he wanted to do. Players didn't really have a choice or a voice. They could ***** to the media or ask for a trade, but either they played 100% when they got the tap on the shoulder, or they simply sat on the bench for all but a few minutes a game. Most bought into what he was selling simply because for much of his career he had more Cup rings than anyone else on the ice.

 

[Johnny Engine]

Blood Feud by Adrian Dater has some good Bowman bits too. In fact, I came out of reading the book wishing the whole thing had been about Bowman.

 

[Scott1980]

The thing about Bowman was, as Harry Neal once said, he could get so-so teams to be great (St Louis 67/68 - 69/70) and great teams to be extraordinaire (Pretty much any team he's been with since).

Steve Shutt once said that, when the Habs were having problems scoring, Bowman once brought a hockey net into the Habs dressing room and said, "Look how big this thing is! How hard can it be to put a puck in it?"