The Game (7 page)

No one has ever heard of a “Bowman system” as they have a “Shero system.” Fred Shero’s Flyers, a good but limited team, needed a system. To be effective, they needed to play just one way, and to play that way so well they could overcome any team. Bowman’s team is different. Immensely talented, immensely varied, it is a team literally good enough to play, and win, any style of game. For it, a system would be too confining, robbing the team of its unique feature—its flexibility. Further, Bowman understands, as Shero did, that the flip side of winning with a system is losing
by
that system. So Bowman, a pragmatist with the tools any pragmatist would envy, coaches with what he calls a “plan.”

It starts with speed. It is the essence of the Canadiens’ game“(f)irewagon hockey” someone once called it—and Bowman understands speed. He knows that speed is disorienting, that, like an old man in a thirty-year-old’s world, it robs an opponent of coordination and control, stripping away skills, breaking down systems, making even the simplest tasks seem difficult. He knows that with Lafleur, Lemaire, Shutt, Lapointe, Gainey, and others, speed is an edge we have on everyone else; so Bowman hones that edge and uses it. His practices are in constant motion, shooting, passing, everything done
on the go
,
with speed
, every drill rooted in high-pace skating (in the Canada Cup and the Challenge Cup, when Bowman coached players from other teams, they tired quickly in early practices, unused to his pace). In games, he tells us in his earnest way to “throw speed at them.” Other teams forecheck, then fall back quickly to pick up their men, but Bowman frees his skaters to chase the puck in all but the defensive zone. In the 1976 Stanley Cup finals with the Flyers, in a high-pitched, impassioned voice, he reminded us repeatedly, “Don’t respect their speed.” He wanted to pressure the Flyers with all five men in their zone, unworried by 2-on-1 breaks that would sometimes result. He knew that against the Flyers, a methodical, even slow, team, our speed would let us recover easily.

But speed is not enough. Quick players are often small, and in smaller rinks against bigger teams, are frequently subject to intimidating attack. Bowman knows that Lafleur, Lemaire, and Lapointe, players whose skills turn the Canadiens from a good team to a special one, must be made “comfortable,” as he puts it; they must be allowed to play without fear. So never farther than the players’ bench away, to balance and neutralize that fear, Bowman has Lupien and Chartraw, sometimes Cam Connor, in other years Pierre Bouchard, and of course, Larry Robinson. With a game-to-game core of fourteen or fifteen players, Bowman fine-tunes his line-up, choosing two or three from among the six or more available to find the “right mix,” as he calls it, for every game we play. He believes that a championship team needs all kinds of players, and that too many players of the same type, no matter how good, make any team vulnerable. So for games against the Flyers and the Bruins, and for many road games, he goes with a“(b)ig line-up”; for other games, different combinations which an opponent and the circumstances of a season make appropriate.

It gives him the kind of flexibility that no other coach has. He knows that only a special set of circumstances can beat us, so he coaches as if preoccupied with minimizing those circumstances. He can do nothing to prevent slumps and injuries, but he can make sure that well-prepared replacements are ready when needed. We carry five or six extra players, more than any other team. It can be a problem at times, since players who play little complain often and disturb a team.

But when a team is winning, these players say little, for few in the press or public will listen to them. And while Bowman maintains even stricter isolation from them—his attitude seems to be “If you don’t play the way I want you to, why should I speak to you?”—he keeps them around and uses them. He plays them occasionally, and gives them ice time with Ruel before and after practice, reminding the regulars that good players not out of sight, never out of mind, are only the barest margin away from playing more often. It is with these marginal players that Bowman feels he has the greatest impact.

Once he remarked to me that Guy Lafleur seemed obsessed always to do better; that while he was a good team player, being the foremost player in the league carried with it a larger responsibility, and that for him anything less than a scoring title was not enough. Bowman feels much the same way about the team’s other exceptional players—about Gainey, Robinson, Savard, Lapointe, Shutt, Cournoyer, Lemaire. He believes that while he can set a constructive tone for the team, and can prepare these players physically and tactically, reminding them from time to time to their annoyance that they are not playing as they can, ultimately what drives them is
them
.

Not so the marginal player. Young players whose styles are not yet set, older players on the other side of their careers, their egos battered until they’re willing to listen: these players are vulnerable and can be manipulated. So Bowman manipulates them—Tremblay, Chartraw, Larouche, Larocque, and others—sometimes cruelly. Benching them, ignoring them for long periods of time, he makes them worry, and makes them wonder why. Then the team hits injuries or a slump and he uncovers them again. He works them hard in practice, watching them, telling the press how hard and well they are working, making them feel they are earning their place in the team. Given a chance, usually at home, they give back an inspired game. A few games later, the inspiration fades, and it all starts again. He holds them by their emotional strings, often for many years, manipulating them until he gets out of them what he thinks is there; then, when he gets it, when he feels it is grooved into place, he stops.

“He’s not honest,” they often complain, though translating “hon-nête” too literally they mean, in part, that he isn’t “fair.” Several times each has asked to be traded, but it won’t happen. Bowman knows that a championship team needs two goalies capable of winning a Stanley Cup; that it needs Chartraw’s versatility and toughness, Tremblay’s infectious enthusiasm, the prodigal goal-scoring of Larouche. In important games, when each team fixes on the other team’s best, holding them in check, it is often the quality and readiness of the rest that make the crushing difference. In the third game of the 1976 finals against the Flyers, Chartraw made that difference; two years later, Tremblay scored two goals and Larouche one in a 4-1 Stanley Cup winning game against the Bruins. It is all part of getting “the right players on the ice.” Bowman knows the enormous strength he has, and squanders none of it.

On a team of talented, tough-minded, egotistical players, Bowman is the boss. His captains—earlier Henri Richard, now Cournoyer—(h)ave no special role. A few years ago, he formed a committee of the senior players on the team—Lemaire, Savard, Lapointe, Cournoyer, Roberts, Pete Mahovlich, and me (“the Magnificent 7” the others called us) to meet with him periodically to discuss the team. We held one meeting. (That we had only one meeting didn’t surprise us; that he formed the committee did.)

Unmistakably, and to an extent that may surprise even him, Bowman is in charge. Not Grundman, not Pollock before him—in distant upstairs offices, with
technical
authority, we feel little contact with them. It is Bowman who sets the tone and mood for the team. He may say less than he seems to say (when asked, most players admit to their own surprise they “never really had any problem with him”), but his presence, belligerent, nagging, and demanding, like a conscience that never shuts up, is constant. And every so often, when some internal threshold is passed, he will blurt out something in his acerbic, biting way, to others usually, but really to all of us. Just words we’ve all heard before from others, but coming as they do
without
malice, with nothing in them that can be for his benefit, we hear them as words that might be right, and probably are. It is what he says and what he might say that make us fear him. It is his hair-trigger sense of outrage at those who don’t measure up; and the feeling, the fear we all share, that at any moment that outrage will be directed at us.

He knows each of us too well; he leaves us no place to hide. He knows that we are strong, and are weak; that we can be selfish and lazy, that we can eat too much and drink too much, that we will always look for the easy way out, and when we find it, that we will use it. He knows that each of us comes with a stable of excuses, “crutches” he calls them, ready to use whenever we need them. The team with the fewest crutches will win, Bowman believes. So he inserts himself into our minds, and anticipates these crutches—practice times, travel schedule, hotel, the menu for our team meal—then systematically kicks them away, leaving us with no way out if we lose. And when we don’t lose, we get our revenge, we pretend that we did it ourselves. We want him to have no part of it; and he lets us. He never challenges the integrity of the team. Just as he will allow no player to stand above the team, he will not stand above it either. The team must believe in itself.

More than any coach I have had, Bowman has a complete and undistractible team focus. He has one loyalty—to the team; not to individual players on the team, though most coaches prefer to ignore the distinction (as most players do until they are traded or become free agents); not to fans or to anyone else. Most of us like to pretend the primacy of personal relationships in our work (then are unforgiving of those who let us down); Bowman doesn’t pretend. To him, loyalty is doing what you can and doing it well. If you don’t, and play less often or are traded away, it is not he who is being disloyal.

He is uncompromising, unmellowing, unable to be finessed; he is beyond our control. Being a nice guy doesn’t count; going to optional practices, coming early, staying late, doesn’t count. As Pete Mahovlich, Cournoyer, and Henri Richard have discovered, what you have done before counts only until you can’t do it again. No politics, no favors, it is how you measure up to what you can do, how you help the team, how you
perform
—they are what count. It is thin comfort.

Many times, I have sensed in Bowman a personal loyalty beyond the team, but I have been mistaken. I always believed that he played me the way he did because he understood me. He played me often because I needed to play often to feel part of the team; he put me into a game after a bad game because he knew that the humiliation I felt wouldn’t go away until I played better; he played me on the road, when I was sick or injured, against the Islanders, Bruins, and Flyers because he knew I needed the exciting challenge that each offered.

And when he talked to the press of my outside interests, he always spoke positively of them, as if he understood my need for distractions from the game, my need to scheme with myself to justify continuing in hockey, my need to pursue other things for their own sake. Two years ago, I allowed four goals in a first period against Vancouver, then was jeered by Forum fans the rest of the game. When I didn’t play at home for more than a month until we met the Bruins, I thought he had been protecting me, keeping me away from the Forum until we played a team against which I always played well. In fact it was none of those things; it was
nothing personal
at all. I played often, I played after bad games, and against the league’s best teams when I was sick or injured, because I play well then, and because when I play well, the team is better off. It is because he understands me
as a goalie
that he plays me when he does; he does it for the team, not for me.

A few weeks ago, the NHL all-stars played the Soviet National Team in the Challenge Cup in New York. While I had played against the Soviets only a few times in my career, I had done poorly enough in many games that there seemed a clear and disturbing pattern to my play. Simply, I began to wonder, as others did, if I was too big to cope with the quickness and dexterity of the Soviet game.

I had always been able to adapt before. I had moved from Jr. B. (h)ockey to college hockey, from college to the National Team to the American League to the NHL. As a seven-year-old, I played against teenagers in backyard games. I had played against teams that had seemed too good—RAC, the Weston Dodgers, North Dakota, the Bruins in 1971. Many times, I was certain I would fail. Many times, I did not want to play, afraid of being humiliated if I did. But I always managed to cope, and found a way. This was different. This was not the first time I had played the Soviets. I knew exactly what I would face. And because I did, as if finally reaching the point where a coach would send me home, I was afraid I was up against something I could not handle.

I arrived in New York with my teammates three days before the first game. I went directly to my room and set myself a schedule, determined not to repeat the mistake I had made three years earlier.

The night before a New Year’s Eve game with the Soviet Central Army Team in 1975, I got away from the bustle of visitors who were arriving at our house and went to a downtown hotel. There, alone with myself for twenty-four hours, I built slowly for the game, and kept on building until the game and I became a fixation. I thought and worried and filled up with doubts, I could never get mentally free enough just to play, and while the great Soviet goaltender Tretiak stopped thirty-five shots, I stopped ten in a 3-3 tie.

This time, I would do it differently. I would keep busy, always moving, never allowing a moment alone with myself, never a chance to dwell on other games, to think/worry about those ahead. I got up early, and walked around Manhattan, shopping, looking, always moving; I went to Madison Square Garden for practice, ate a quick lunch, and walked again; I went to a movie, to another movie, ate dinner, walked, went to another movie—then did the same the next day.

We won the first game 4-2.

Friday was a day off. I repeated Tuesday and Wednesday, blanking my mind, building up energy, comfortable, confident, getting ready for Saturday. After a good start, we were outplayed in the last two periods and lost 5-4. I spent Saturday night with teammates talking about the Sunday game. We talked about what we hadn’t done, and what we needed to do to win. I felt confident, comfortable, almost relaxed.