Scotty

A Hockey Life Like No Other

By: Ken Dryden

Narrated by: Ken Dryden

Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A hockey life like no other.

A hockey book like no other.

Scotty Bowman is recognized as the best coach in hockey history, and one of the greatest coaches in all of sports. He won more games and more Stanley Cups than anyone else. Despite all the changes in hockey, he coached at the very top for more than four decades, his first Cup win and his last an astonishing thirty-nine years apart. Yet perhaps most uniquely, different from anyone else who has ever lived or ever will again, he has continuously experienced the best of hockey since he was fourteen years old. With his precious standing room pass to the Montreal Forum, he saw "Rocket" Richard play at his peak every Saturday night. He saw Gordie Howe as a seventeen-year-old just starting out. He scouted Bobby Orr as a thirteen-year-old in Parry Sound, Ontario. He coached Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux. He coached against Wayne Gretzky. For the past decade, as an advisor for the Chicago Blackhawks, he has watched Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, and Connor McDavid. He has seen it all up close.

Ken Dryden was a Hall-of-Fame goaltender with the Montreal Canadiens. His critically acclaimed and bestselling books have shaped the way we read and think about hockey.

Now the player and coach who won five Stanley Cups together team up once again as Dryden gives his coach a new test: Tell us about all these players and teams you've seen, but imagine yourself as their coach. Tell us about their weaknesses, not just their strengths. Tell us how you would coach them and coach against them. And then choose the top eight teams of all time, match them up against one another in a playoff series, and, separating the near-great from the great, tell us who would win. And why.

Scotty is about a life—a hockey life, a Canadian life, a life of achievement. It is Scotty Bowman in his natural element, behind the bench one more time.

©2019 Ken Dryden (P)2019 McClelland & Stewart

Critic reviews

"[Scotty] is the story of one of the game's greatest coaches written by one of the game's best goaltenders of all-time, and woven throughout are brilliant stories from two of the greatest minds to grace the ice." (Ken Campbell, The Hockey News)

"It's possible [Dryden]'s an even better writer than he was a goaltender." (Mitch Melnick, TSN)

"The book is a must-read for fans of the dynastic Canadiens, Lemieux's Cup-winning Penguins or the Yzerman/Fedorov Wings powerhouse, and because of Dryden's masterful prose, it should be considered a must-read for all hockey fans. It's most certainly worthy of Bowman's and Dryden's legacies." (Kevin Greenstein, Inside Hockey)

Fantastic book for the hockey fan

This is a fantastic book for any hockey fan. Scotty Bowman is the best coach in NHL history and arguably the best coach ever in pro sports. I loved how he went through 7 decades of hockey, identifying the best teams of those decades. Who the players were, what made them great. What were their weaknesses? How would he coach them? How would he coach against them? Great insight into a great hockey mind. If you love the sport of hockey, this is a must read.

Excellent book and reading.

This is my third Dryden book and I really appreciate the details and substance in his writing as well as his solid reading of his words.

Fabulous Hockey Book

this book is excellent in its story telling and its description of the hockey greats

best hockey, no best sports book I've ever read

This is a man who has seen every player you've ever heard of as a rookie on up. This is a man who is a student of the game in the truest sense of the word. The way this story is told is so much much better than just a biography. It teaches history of the game beyond stats and names, It teaches the evolution of the philosophy of the game and I found myself dying to know who would be champion of Scotty's bracket. awesome!! If you are a fan of any sport, if you play, or coach this is a must read.

A wonderful summary of one of the greatest coaches in sports.

Has an author, Dryden deserves a second entry into Hockey’s Hall of Fame. The concept in Scotty is brilliant, providing readers with the adrenaline, the highs and lows, of some of the sports greatest teams and players. Through the eyes of its greatest coach.

Legend!!!

Great read about how one of the greatest coaches in Sports History thinks the game of Hockey. Even if your not a Hockey fan I highly recommend you pick this one up!

Like No Other

Scotty Bowman’s story spans from hockey’s Golden Age of Tge Rocket, Plante and BoomBoom to the present. It is as much a book about coaching any sport at any level as it is about hockey. And while I’ve never really been a fan of hockey books, I love Dryden’s ability to communicate his knowledge, love of a great game and his story telling.

Absolutely brilliant.

As always, Mr. Dryden has written and narrated a masterpiece about two masterpieces. The epic sport we call hockey and it’s greatest coach, our Red Wings coach, Scotty. You could not ask for a better trifecta of awesome than Dryden, Hockey stories and Bowman. A brilliant look into Scottys life, his mind, and his life. All the little curiosities I had about Coach Bowman are being answered in this book, as are so many great insights in to some of the greatest players in this sport. And, just as in Game Change, Mr. Dryden narration is spot on. Thank you Ken....and Scotty. #LGRW

Great book on a great coach

Scotty Bowman is considered to be one of the all-time great coaches in all of team sports, with his teams winning nine Stanley Cups spanning a time frame of 29 years between the first (Montreal Canadiens, 1973) and the last (Detroit Red Wings, 2002). He amassed over 1400 regular season wins during his remarkable career and his goalie for five of those championships, Ken Dryden, has written a book on Bowman's hockey life as a player, scout, coach and other duties.

"Other duties" include his current status as a special guest of the Tampa Bay Lightning to their home games. He still attends as many games as he can, goes to his seat in the press box and still takes diligent notes on each game with the chance that he might be able to pass along information to the Lightning staff. That is typical Bowman – always looking for anything that can help a hockey team improve. It is the impression a reader or listener will get after enjoying this book.

Dryden and Bowman will take the reader through decades of hockey history and the name dropping is impressive – Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky for starters as players he saw but did not coach. As for those he coached on his championship teams in Montreal and Detroit, there are plenty of stories and observations of them, from Guy Lafluer to Mario Lemieux (even though he was the coach for Pittsburgh when they won the Cup in 1992, Bowman doesn't talk a lot about that team, only obtaining the job due to the death of Bob Johnson, so he calls them Johnson's team) to Steve Yzerman.

The book isn't limited to Bowman's championships as he talks about his life before coaching when he was working for Sam Pollack with the Canadiens – later they would become a very successful coach-general manager tandem. He also talks about his time coaching the St. Louis Blues as a brand new expansion team as well as the Buffalo Sabres, who were a talented team under Bowman who could never get over the hump.

One other feature of the book is a "tournament" in which Bowman selects the eight greatest teams he has seen in his lifetime and he breaks each one of them down to Dryden and then eliminates them one by one until there is one team left. No spoilers here as one will have to read or listen to the book in order to find out which team that will be.

Dryden is an established hockey author and his work shines here. At times, there is great detail and I believe that the audio version that I listened to will work better for those who both read physical books and listen to audio books. But whichever version is chosen, one will enjoy this biography of a legendary hockey coach.

Great Concept and Excellent Execution

I already read Dryden's other book, The Game, so I knew what I was getting - very vivid storytelling and very Canadian linguistics. This made the experience even better.

The book starts out but having Scotty choose his favorite 8 teams and then they walk through the teams he chose interweaving Scotty's life throughout. What a neat idea to get a guy to talk about himself when he doesn't want to talk about himself!

Scotty coached many teams so this isn't a book about any one team, you will get lots of hockey history. Since Scotty grew up near Montreal, you can't hate the Habs, 'cause there is quite a bit of talk about them. I am in my 50's, so the teams he talks about are many of the teams I watched growing up. This is a must read for EVERY hockey fan! #LGRW