NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: CAPITALS v RED WINGS

June 15, 1998

Scotty Bowman

COACH BOWMAN: No. He went through the whole practice. You know, it was a couple-of-day injury, but he's going to be stronger in Game 4. But he had treatment. He's just about got rid of everything.

COACH BOWMAN: Well, I mean, everybody knows how he's playing. Watching him and, I guess we see it most of the time, so it's not a surprise to us. He's had -- it's a different kind of year than he's had before, but he has been healthy which really helped him a lot. As I said yesterday, the break that we got in the -- in the end of the season -- that he got, rather -- he got a week that he didn't skate and that -- that was sort of the -- to make up for the loss of the time that most of the players got when they went over to the Olympics. So he was -- he also went to the All-Star Game. He didn't play in the all the All-Star Game but Canadian Team -- that was whether they started up. He has been healthy and he takes care of himself, obviously. He's not much different than he's been, I don't think, since I came to Detroit. He's a very determined player and you sort of have to tell him not to practice or if you want to give him a rest, he feels obligated that he should go. He likes to practice, so it's not a problem. But -- and he's not a big man. You know, he's -- but he's a really conditioned athlete.

COACH BOWMAN: That will be up to Kenny Holland and people above me. They'll have to -- I don't know. I read the book by Pat Riley, The Year of the More, and if you win again, it's the Year of the More More. But that's -- that's typical. I mean, it's automatic, it's going to happen. I won't have to be concerned about that because I'm not -- I'm not involved, you know, in this part of the game. If I do coach next year, it would be the same as I coached this year. They ask you questions about certain players, explain how they're going to do it. I mean, the biggest decision last summer was on the goaltending with Mike Vernon. You know, as a coach, you want them back, but I wasn't negotiating with him and he made it pretty clear to Kenny Holland that he wouldn't come back if he didn't get another contract and while there was a little bit of disagreement with Vernon and the team a couple of years ago, it started like when Mike wanted -- after the series, I think he wanted a three-year contract; the club wanted to give him a two-year contract. So, they gave him a two-year contract and they said: Okay, we'll settle -- the club's option for Year 3. If you deliver, then we'll decide after that. So, I guess what happened, they won the Stanley Cup and he did have a year left in his contract. The club's option. But he made it clear to Kenny that he probably wouldn't come back and if the club force it on him, it could be an awful fight which they had two years ago. Plus the fact that Chris was coming along and played so much and I guess you look at the -- at the numbers in there, the responsibility to go out and -- the club took the stand while they might be politically right, the fact is that Vernon did deliver, played again, there was an awful lot of goalies going on the option market this year and the kind of guys like Richter and Joseph and Puppa, there's a lot of them. And Vanbiesbrouck and Mike didn't want to go into that group of guys and have to fight it out for what he thought -- I mean, he's had a good career. He was good for us and it was the time to go. So decisions like that will be tough to come by and I don't think the coach should have a big input into the money part of the game, you know, because he can say what he wants about who should play and who should be about there, but he doesn't go out and scout players or something, like that. I wasn't involved in those decisions. I was for a couple of years, but not really because usually those decisions come down to money. But, Kenny is a young guy and he's got a lot of energy. He's been with the team a long time. He's got a good staff with him and he works very well with the upper part of the ownership. They think very highly of him, so there is good chemistry there. It's going to be tough but I think he's -- he's equipped well enough to know that -- he's a guy that wants to win. We'll have his input but he's got a lot of responsibility. Then when he got over the Fedorov situation this year, he probably was getting a lot of advice and a lot of suggestions. And, when it comes to crunch time to make a decision, you know, they had -- I think they had the right perspective. Michael Ilitch would rather have Sergei Fedorov than five draft picks and the 28 million that he would have to a pay. When he looked at the full contract, I mean, he always felt that it was an investment in the club for the long range rather than the short range and if he wanted to go short range, maybe he would have done something else. But he just knew when we made the trade for Keith Primeau, we lost a big centerman and losing a guy like Sergei Fedorov. These are tough decisions they'll have to make and it's their decision and whoever is responsible for those decisions will live by them.

COACH BOWMAN: No. When I was asked to -- in -- after the 94 season, they were going to change things around and when they called me and asked me if I would do -- step up and do a bit more, I think at the time they had some ideas that I got a call from Jimmy Devellano to say that he was going to ship all the contracts to my house in Buffalo. I said: I'm not interested in that at all. I'm not going to spoil my summer worrying about contracts. The plan was he was going to do the contracts. I was going to be contacting the teams for players and Kenny Holland was going to be looking after the -- like going to be the assistant general manager. We didn't have a general manager at the time, but he was doing the functions of assistant general manager starting to assign players for the minor league, responsible for the farm team, looking after all the scouts and he was on-the-job-training. He was working with Jimmy on contracts because Jimmy did most of those contracts and most of them are done in the final run with the ownership. They're all calls the owner is going to make. To spend this much money or that much money. So the plan at that time in 94 was for Kenny to be the general manager in due course and it -- because we started in 1994 and then by '96, it made sense to have somebody as a general manager. I think when you don't have somebody as a general manager, you are in limbo. It did straighten itself out. People would call. But we worked very closely together, didn't have any problems. I think we didn't have any problems because Kenny has never been a coach, not interested in coaching, and was always -- when you're a scout and you move up the ladder, actually, the best -- the stream you're in is to be a manager and that's what he was. I was a manager in a few places and it's impossible now to be worrying about contracts and all that kind of stuff. Any move we made this year, he always called all the coaches in? A business-like manager talked to me and Dave Lewis and Barry Smith and Don Waddell and he also talked quite a bit with Jimmy Nill who he relies on quite a bit. There is a lot of chemistry there with those guys and I was never interested in coming to Detroit and being a general manager. That's a job that you either become the coaching stream or the manager's stream.

COACH BOWMAN: Well, Steve is, like you said he maybe didn't win an individual award because there has been some real stiff competition out there with guys like Gretzky and Lemieux since his career -- since 1993, I guess. And Gretzky and -- Gretzky was in his prime and Lemieux came in, so I don't think that's a knock against him because he didn't win an award. But I don't think our players -- I don't even think Nick Lidstrom, they'll take individual awards but when you're this close to winning, I don't think there is any focus. I know from past teams that I've been on, Conn Smythe winners. You sort of get -- no real deference or bad thinking about Conn Smythe because when you get a trophy -- to win an individual trophy, to win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is huge, but I'm sure he's not thinking about it. They'll be some candidates. He's always tough to take a different view than -- like whether it's a goalie or a great defenseman, but Steve has played this entire Playoffs. I'm not sure how they vote on it if it's just the Finals or whatever it is. But, in the Finals thus far, we're not even halfway through actually. Three games doesn't make it up. But I don't think he's concerned about -- he's never been that kind of player. I'm sure he'll take it if it's there and take it with a lot of modesty. That's the way he is.

COACH BOWMAN: Yeah. It was very difficult in Pittsburgh because it was the first time the team ever won the Stanley Cup and we could feel the excitement building up during the season and then when the Playoffs started -- I mean, that was Bob Johnson's team to get those players to play like they did and it's a little different because we really didn't find out about Bob's condition until actually the World Cup -- not the World Cup, it was the Canada Cup, I think, at the time -- when he started to have training camp is when he started to have some health problems. And, it was a shock in August when we found out, you know, realistically he wasn't going to be at the training camp and he was very seriously sick. But it was a year that the players continually thought about him. He passed away, I think, in late November of that year, and, you know, it wasn't easy on anybody. They fought through it and got through to the finals and had a big run. I think Pittsburgh and Chicago won about 11 games in a row in the Playoffs. We had 7, they had 11. So the team responded; was not a very difficult problem for me to coach that team because we tried to -- everything that Bob had done the year before, we tried to keep in intact. We ran it exactly the same way as if he had been there. But it has a similar thing to it, that realistically the -- life does go on, but the memories of what happened, they don't go away and we -- we're a little different here because we see improvement in the two players that are still -- the player and the trainer that are recovering. And we're able to see them. But nevertheless, we know the contribution they made to our team last season.