During the 2008 offseason, I had an exclusive in the office of current Chicago Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman, who was Asst. GM, Hockey Operations at the time. Stan was born in Montreal where his father Scotty Bowman, the all-time winningest head coach in NHL history, was coaching at the time. Here are some of the highlights of that conversation; including many statements that have indeed come to fruition today.
PMB: Let’s talk about developing your own homegrown players from within:
SB: The way it works in most sports, particularly in hockey, there’ s a spending limit now; and with the salary cap, you can’t rely on the free agent market to build your team. You can rely on it to round out or complement your team, but you have to draft well. Your core should be players that you’ve developed through your draft and the minor league system. Picking 11th, the guy we draft this year is not going to help us this year.
The guy we pick this year will make an impact in a couple years, assuming we picked the right guy. We’re focused on getting the right guys because that’s how you continue the pipeline. When you have guys reaching a certain level, you can’t have 20 guys each making $5 million a year because your league payroll is $50 million. So that’s a limiting factor, and you’re always going to need those younger guys who don’t make a lot of money.
PMB: Do you think the Detroit Red Wings are a good example of this strategy?
SB: They’ve not only become a good team but also maintained their high level, by replenishing from within. They have occasionally gone out and gotten players like every team has to. But for the most part, the core has come up in their system, and they’ve been Red Wings since day one. Whenever a team has success like that, you have to look at what they’re doing because they’re doing something right. And they’ve maintained a high level of hockey for 15 years now.
We want to get to that point, and once we’re there we want to stay there. We don’t want to be a team that has one good year and then is back down struggling to make the playoffs. We’re in a transitional phase right now, from being on the outside to in the mix of the 10 or so teams in that next tier. We want to get to that next tier. We want to be one of those teams that challenges not only to get in the playoffs but also challenges to be one of the top teams in the conference. We’re working our way up there. Last year was a big year for us; we didn’t quite get in, but we showed a lot of improvement.
And if we improve again next year, then we’ll be one of those top teams.
PMB: How about the buzz surrounding emerging superstar and 2007 #1 overall draft pick Patrick Kane?
SB: It was exciting to bring the buzz back, and when we got Kane that was kind of the first step in the rejuvenation of the franchise. Everybody was excited about him hopefully playing for the Blackhawks; but a year ago at this time I don’t think anyone could have predicted that he was going to be as good as he was this quickly.
I mean he was our guy; there was never any doubt amongst out staff about whom we were going to draft. We knew he was going to be a star player; but to come into the league at 18 and dominate the other rookies right away, it surprised even us. If you look at the other stars in the league, they were not as good their first year as Kane was. And I think he’s just going to get better.
And Jonathan Toews is another guy who was picked two years ago. So he’s one year older, but he’s still a kid; and those two guys together were the first impetus towards changing this thing because we knew they were going to be good players for us. They came into training camp, and we hit the ground running with those two; and as the season started, we’ve never looked back.
Part Two of this interview will run later today
Part Three will run Saturday and feature Bowman’s insights from Media Day