3 days Ago
PENTICTON, B.C. — Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman has been on the job for less than two months, and those two months have been something of a whirlwind.
From navigating a double offer sheet to signing one of the best players on Earth to a long-term extension, this has been a uniquely eventful summer for Bowman and the Oilers. Advertisement Of course, Bowman also is getting back into hockey management following a multi-year period where he was effectively suspended indefinitely from working in the NHL for his admittedly inadequate response to an allegation of sexual abuse of Chicago Blackhawks player Kyle Beach by then-Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich in 2010. In early July, Bowman was reinstated by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and subsequently hired by the Oilers to resume his career as an NHL general manager.
At his first Penticton Young Stars tournament as Oilers GM, Bowman caught up with The Athletic and discussed how he plans to apply the work he did during his time away from the league to his new role, his busy first summer on the job, what he learned in Chicago about building an effective supporting cast around an elite core as that core becomes more expensive, and what he’d tell hockey fans who are skeptical that he deserves a second chance in a leadership role in hockey. The following conversation has been edited for length and readability. When you reflect on your experiences over the past two years with Sheldon Kennedy’s Respect Group, is there anything you take from that that will inform how you function as a team builder, manager and leader in this role that goes beyond having a greater appreciation for preventing abuse in the workplace? There’s a lot of things I think about.
When I first got introduced to Sheldon Kennedy, it was talking about the Respect Group training that he was going through. It was really well done training, and I did his whole course, but it didn’t necessarily reflect the way hockey players live and the locker room environment in particular. It’s just different than working in an office building or in a factory.
I told Sheldon at the time, “This is really good stuff. I’m not sure it’s going to move the needle for hockey players.” He said, “I know, and that’s why I’d like your help because I’d like to do something that’s really meaningful, not just do the same training we do for corporate people around the country.
” Advertisement So with that in mind, then you have to look at the ecosystem of a locker room and the team bus and all of the people who interact with each other each day. So that’s what we tried to do and that’s how the Charter idea came about. Fortunately what happened to Sheldon and what happened to Kyle Beach isn’t a common occurrence.
Certainly we know it’s an awful situation and we never want that to happen, but what does happen more frequently is those smaller things like bullying. Things that eat away at the player — and not just player, but the member of the team in the locker room — where people don’t necessarily want to come to the rink every day, or they’re witnessing things they wish weren’t being said or weren’t being done. Those are things that happen more frequently.
What I learned with the charter and in working with Sheldon is to try and set up an environment where players can recognize those things they don’t like, and give them a way to deal with it with their teammates, so that it doesn’t continue and so that it doesn’t spiral into a really negative situation. Because at the end of the day we want players to perform at their best. They train hard and they want to be professional athletes.
In order to get the best out of them as professional athletes, they need to be in an environment that’s supportive of them, where they can show up authentically and don’t have to hide parts of themselves. That’s really what I learned is important, but the question is: How do you implement that? And not just in the locker room, but even in the front office. So that’s top of mind for me now, and I guess I didn’t realize the significance of that.
So taking the hockey part of it out, even when you’re working with your staff, like our development staff is here, and when you’re working together, it’s the same type of thing. Create an environment where people can be their authentic self, they can show up to work, they can not fear that they’re going to be uncomfortable. Those things all matter.
When you set up that environment, then you have your best chance at getting the most out of your players and employees. Advertisement Does it impact what you prioritize in player evaluation? Or how you set up reporting structures within a hockey operations department? Have you already been able to begin to implement the things you learned? Yes, absolutely. The charter work is important, and it’s not just limited to the team.
You can have the same type of environment with your staff. The good news for me is that I’m getting to know all these people and there’s a great staff here. I’ve had a chance to get to know the amateur scouts through the Hlinka, they’re a great staff, and there’s a whole group of people who work in the offices back in Edmonton and I’m just starting to meet all of them.
One of my priorities is to make sure that they feel they can be themselves. Because when that happens, people are going to be able to perform at the highest level. With the job you’ve taken and the reaction to it, what do you say to those fans who aren’t convinced that you deserved a second chance? I would say to those fans that it’s my job to prove to them, and earn their respect over time.
It may not come right away. It may not ever come. I accept that.
People who are fans of the game and fans of the team, they’re entitled to feel the way that they do. It’s not for me to tell anybody how to feel. All I can do is try to explain the things I’ve learned, and how I want to try and make a positive impact on our organization moving forward.
I’ve reflected on the fact that when everything is said and done 30 years from now, you want to look back, and you want the people you work with to be able to say, “I really enjoyed working with Stan because he helped support me to be the best I could be in my job.” And part of that is creating the right environment. If people are skeptical of that, I understand it.
I respect it. My goal isn’t to try and convince one fan or another fan, it’s to try and — with the people I work with — create an environment where they’re supported and can perform at the best level. Hopefully in the process of that, maybe people can realize that some good can come out of a bad situation.
Advertisement So eight weeks into the role, what’s been your priority in terms of putting your stamp on hockey operations and what comes next? Normally when you’re getting going in July, there’s not a lot that typically happens. Like I said, I went to the Hlinka tournament. Right when that ended the offer sheets came in.
We had already started negotiations with Leon Draisaitl right when I started in late July and those things have taken up most of my time over the past few weeks. The week the offer sheets came in was a busy week, just in terms of deciding what to do. Looking forward to how we would structure our team if we matched or didn’t match.
Moving beyond that, we had the negotiations. Leon was a priority because I didn’t want that dragging into the season. I was confident we could get him signed, but I knew those negotiations do take time in getting it to the finish line.
Now that that’s finished, we’re turning our attention to this event and training camp. We’ve made some additions to our player development staff and now the key is to focus on training camp and get ourselves off to a good start. Transaction-wise, we’ve done those things.
We’re ready for camp. It’s more a matter of evaluating the players, choosing our team and concurrent with that, we’re still going to be looking at our staffing. Do we need to add in any other places? I’ve been very impressed with the group we have here.
These are all people who are new to me, but I’m very impressed with their work ethic and professionalism and knowledge. So it’s a good thing, I guess, that I’m not looking to change people out. It’s been a good experience to get to know them.
You made the three player development hires last week, and it’s it’s an interesting spot that your team is in. The future-minded items — whether it’s the Matt Savoie trade, or the Sam O’Reilly trade or this prospect tournament — sort of logically interact with the reality of the Draisaitl extension, and presumably the eventual Connor McDavid and Evan Bouchard extensions. Given those dynamics, how critical is it even as a win-now contender to develop that reliable push from your prospect pool as your core gets more expensive? It’s critical and I think the reason the player development side is so important.
We had a meeting about it earlier today and I was trying to share my vision with the group about its importance — you don’t get an immediate payoff from player development, it’s more of a longer road thing. It’s something that you have to put your time into and these players will take a few years, but your goal in development is to try to shorten that natural development curve. Players are going to improve regardless over the next few years, but we have to accelerate that with some of them to make sure that we have young players coming in.
Advertisement There’s no question that in the next few years the cap is going to be a challenge for us. So we have to be ready to have players step in, whether they’re coming from college, the American League or from junior. If we can shorten that timeframe, that’s important.
We’re really going to hope to see the fruits of our labour three, four, five years from now. Where we have players who aren’t even drafted yet, who we’ve worked with throughout the year, and now we’re seeing them start to come into our team. We haven’t had many picks the last few years, we’re not going to become a team that’s accumulating picks.
But I do believe that you can still draft successfully even if you’re not picking early. In fact, that’s part of the job. Are there lessons about this next phase for the Oilers from your time in Chicago, in particular, that you can draw from the time after the third deals that you signed Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane to in 2014? Yes, having gone through it, I can tell you that it gets harder and harder as time goes on.
The fortunate thing is that Leon and Connor in particular — and, say, Bouchard too — they’re still either in the prime or entering the prime of their careers. The cap is going to be one thing, but I expect their performance to still be at the top. So our goal isn’t to find the star players, but it’s absolutely to find the supporting cast.
There’s a lot of ways that you can do that, certainly through the draft, through trades, through free agent acquisitions and undrafted free agents. Those are all areas we’re going to spend a lot of time examining in the coming years. I learned back then that it wasn’t easy, but I still think we can do it.
Your predecessor was a huge supporter of this tournament, as he was of the Traverse tournament. What does the future of the Young Stars tournament look like from the Oilers’ perspective? I haven’t talked to our group about it yet, but I’ve enjoyed my time here. I like what I see and I think there’s value to these sorts of events.
It’s a great way to start the season. (Photo: Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images).
