Scotty Bowman: A Life in Hockey

"Scotty Bowman: A Life in Hockey" explores the nature of Bowman's genius, beginning with his roots in the Montreal Canadiens development system of the 1950s and 1960s. It follows him to his coaching debut with the St. Louis Blues in 1967/68 and returns with him to Montreal, the site of the incredible five Stanley Cup wins in the 1970s that secured his reputation. But no one who has coached for thirty years is immune to the vagaries of the sport: Bowman's tenure in Buffalo with the Sabres was a dismal exercise that for any other coach might have been the beginning of the end. Yet Bowman gave his detractors a figurative Bronx cheer and returned to his Stanley Cup-winning ways with the Pittsburg Penguins and finally with back-to-back wins for the Detroits Red Wings. With three decades' experience as an NHL coach, Scotty Bowman simply has no peers. His career is a guided tour of the politics and personalities of the post-expansion game, a textbook example of how to rise, and fall, and rise again.