Free The Game by Ken Dryden Page B

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