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"Sam Pollock, who died Wednesday, led the Canadiens to nine Stanley Cups during his 14 years as general manager."
STU COWAN, The Gazette
Published: August 19, 2007

The sad news about Sam Pollock's death last week left me wondering: How many more Stanley Cups might the Canadiens have won if Scotty Bowman had replaced Pollock as general manager in 1978 instead of Irving Grundman?

Pollock, who died Wednesday in Toronto at age 81 after a battle with cancer, led the Canadiens to nine Stanley Cups during his 14 years as general manager from 1964-78. After winning his third straight Cup in 1978, Pollock left the Canadiens to pursue other business interests.

Bowman was behind the bench for four of Pollock's Stanley Cup teams. But Bowman had known Pollock since 1947, and as a young man had learned the game from the master.

"That old moniker 24/7 definitely applied to Sam," Bowman, 73, told me in a telephone interview on Friday. "He was definitely 24/7. I met him in 1947 when I was a young midget player, and then I worked with him for 10 years - between 1956 and '66. For 10 years, I worked every day with him before I went to St. Louis (to become coach of the Blues). I went to (the Ottawa-Hull Junior Canadiens) and I was his assistant manager and assistant coach. He taught me the ropes of the business part of the game."

Pollock brought Bowman back to Montreal in 1971 to coach the Canadiens.

"He wasn't interested in coaching," Bowman said of Pollock. "He was interested in the business side and the development side. I kind of leaned toward the coaching part, so we had a good relationship. I really didn't want to be the manager and he didn't want to be the coach. It was a good relationship and he was getting good players for you. It's pretty good as a coach when your manager can get you good players."

When Pollock decided to move on after the 1978 Stanley Cup, the Canadiens hired Grundman as his replacement instead of Bowman. Grundman was a businessman, not a hockey man. His claim to fame was building the bowling alley empire Laurentian Lanes Ltd. from scratch.

With Grundman as GM and Bowman as coach, the Canadiens won their fourth straight Stanley Cup in 1979. But the honeymoon was over.

On June 11, 1979, Bowman announced he was leaving the Canadiens to become coach and GM of the Buffalo Sabres.

"Listen, there was no room for Irving Grundman and me on the same team," Bowman said at his farewell press conference. "It was a power struggle that I could have won over the years if we'd started from the same point, but he had the lead.

"It was better for them and for me that I go. It had reached the point where I couldn't tolerate any further deterioration of my personal situation. It was a question of hockey philosophy.

"I was convinced I had the competence to be general manager, and I couldn't tolerate the way Grundman directed the club. He said he had a lot of respect for me as coach; I had some for him as a businessman, but I have no respect for him as a hockey man and I couldn't continue in this way."

The Canadiens have won only two Stanley Cups (1986 and 1993) in the 28 years since Bowman left Montreal.

When I spoke with Bowman on Friday, he said he would have been happy if the Canadiens could have hired Emile Francis away from the New York Rangers or Harry Sinden away from the Boston Bruins to replace Pollock.

"But they were pretty established with those teams," Bowman said.

Would he have taken the Canadiens' GM job if it had been offered to him?

"The GM's always a better job than coach," Bowman said. "But I got an opportunity to go to Buffalo, and my wife was from the United States. It's tough to leave your home town but, obviously, it was a much more lucrative job as manager/coach. Financially, it was a much bigger step for my family, which was quite young. But it was not easy to leave Montreal because we had won four Cups in a row.

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