Lowe earned the last of his six Stanley Cups with the Rangers before returning to Edmonton as the Oilers coach and now, GM.

Kevin Lowe Q&A
By John McGourty | NHL.com
Sept. 20, 2004

Kevin Lowe was a terrific hockey player, a six-time Stanley Cup winner with the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers. He was a superb positional player and the anchor and steady tower of strength on an Edmonton defense that over a decade included Paul Coffey, Charlie Huddy, Randy Gregg, Lee Fogolin, Jeff Beukeboom, Craig Muni and Steve Smith.

Lowe was the Oilers' first-ever draft pick and later became captain, coach and now, the team's general manager. He also scored the Oilers' first goal after the team was admitted to the NHL.

During 19 NHL seasons, Lowe played in 1,254 regular season games and 214 Stanley Cup Playoff games. His first five Cup championships came with Edmonton, as he was a member of each of the Oilers' title teams in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990 and was followed by a sixth with the Rangers in 1994. In his 15 seasons with Edmonton, the Oilers never failed to qualify for the postseason with Lowe in the lineup. In fact, Lowe missed postseason play only once in his 19-year career as the Rangers missed the 1992-93 playoffs during his first season in Manhattan.

He holds the Oilers' record for most games played in both the regular season (1,037) and playoffs (172) and is one of only 27 players in NHL history to have played in 1,000 games with one team. His 1,254 career NHL games ranks him 26th on the League's all-time list. He ranks among Edmonton's all-time leaders as he is seventh in assists (309), eighth in points (383) and third in penalty minutes (1,236).

An illness forced Lowe to retire and he joined the Oilers' coaching staff as an assistant to Ron Low in 1998-99. He became the Oilers' head coach the following season and guided Edmonton to a second-place finish in the Northwest Division with a 32-26-16-8 record, only eight points behind the first place Colorado Avalanche, and a berth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Lowe was Assistant Executive Director of Canada Olympic Hockey for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah and successfully performed in the same capacity at the World Cup of Hockey 2004. Working with former teammate Wayne Gretzky, Team Canada's Executive Director, head coach Pat Quinn and Director of Player Personnel, Steve Tambellini, Lowe helped put together a team of NHL players that won the Olympic gold medal for Canada for the first time in 50 years. A 5-2 victory over the United States in the gold-medal final on Feb. 24, 2002 saw Team Canada become the first Canadian squad to win Olympic gold since the Edmonton Waterloo Mercurys won at Oslo, Norway, in 1952.

Team Canada won again at the World Cup of Hockey 2004, defeating Finland, 3-2, in the final.

Hired as Oilers' general manager in 2000, Lowe's contract has been extended through 2008.

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When you retired, why didn't you go fishing, work on your golf handicap or become a day-trader rather than entering a challenging line of work like coaching and management?

The challenge was there. My whole career, my whole life, I plan ahead. I think it's my background. One summer, three years into my pro career, I worked a summer for the Edmonton Sun, in all aspects of the newspaper. Ken King, who's now the president of the Calgary Flames, gave me the job. I worked in production, editorial, sports, finance and sales. You have to learn from the bottom up.

I was always thinking what I would do after hockey, so I began thinking like a coach and preparing like a coach toward the end of my career. Glen Sather told me years ago that my demeanor, intelligence and interest in the game would allow me to be a manager if I wanted to be so I started thinking about that.

The first thing is my love for the game. During the Olympics, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Tambellini and I, everyday we said to each other that it was incredible to be in this position. We knew what the players were going through and we had the luxury of having all the excitement without the bumps and bruises. There were a lot of years when we were in the Stanley Cup Finals, going deep into the Playoffs, when so many people were out of it, with all the media around, I'd be looking into the stands and up in the press box and be thinking, someday I'm going to be enjoying this like those people do. Without the work!

When you returned to the Oilers after playing for the Rangers did you inquire about the possibility of joining team management?

After my fourth year in New York, they were still interested in having me come back and play, but Glen asked me if I'd be interested in returning to Edmonton and get into coaching after that. We had a verbal commitment. The Oilers hadn't made the playoffs in the four years I was away, but we made it back that year. I had an inner-ear problem the next year and played only two games. That ended my career and fast-tracked me into coaching. I shouldn't say fast-tracked, I played 19 years!

You have been captain, coach and general manager. Craig MacTavish was a great Oiler and now coach. Charlie Huddy was a great player and now assistant coach. You go in the dressing room and Barrie Stafford, Sparky Kulchisky and Joey Moss have seemingly always been there. Al Hamilton, the Oilers' captain from the WHA days, has his retired number hanging from the rafters. Paul Coffey said the theme in Edmonton is "Once an Oiler, always an Oiler." Where did it start?

Probably with Glen Sather, in his earliest days as general manager. In the early 1980s, he used to talk about a lot of the things he was applying with the Edmonton Oilers were things that he had taken from the great organizations he'd been part of, the Montreal Canadians, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins. He played for three of the great organizations. He was big on the idea that because we were a young franchise nobody would hand us credibility and respect, we would have to earn it. How do you earn it? You have to have success. But success doesn't give you credibility. You have to have class and tradition. From an early time, he instilled that in us and our organization. By and large, I think we achieved that.

In the early 1980s, when we were just starting to become a team and have some success, the thing besides Glen's intuition about tradition, was the success of the Canadian Football League's Edmonton Eskimos. We were around them a lot and that was a team with massive tradition and success. We learned a lot from those guys. I remember Hugh Campbell's famous line after one of his receivers celebrated too much in the end zone: Act like you've done it before. That hit home with us.

Fast-forward, when players come to Edmonton now, they say how much they like playing there. That's a result of the things we apply to our team, how we treat our players and how they interact with our fans and media. There's relaxed atmosphere in the dressing room. None of that has changed in the intervening 25 years. Some might argue it's not a winning formula anymore. That's a matter of opinion and interpretation.

How do I measure success? We have to win and we have to satisfy the owners and fans. I think we've been able to achieve that. The past four years we made the playoffs twice and finished 15th the other two years. The team is still here! When I took the job, the focus wasn't so much on winning and losing as in keeping the team in Edmonton. Then the challenge was to keep the Oilers viable so we could get to the point where we are today.

The percentage of Albertans playing in the World Cup, that is, elite hockey players, has doubled since the 1972 Summit Series. The growth spurt coincided with the Oilers' success in the early 1980s and continues today. Coincidence or a direct link?

Hockey is really popular in Toronto. In Detroit, they call it "Hockeytown" and Minnesota is "the state of hockey", but hockey in Alberta is really incredible. The kids coming out, per capita, particularly Edmonton and northern Alberta, is unbelievable and a lot of that has to do with the Oilers of the early 1980s. Hockey is massive in Alberta. You saw where the Bruins of the 1970s spawned the generation of (New England) players headed by Brian Leetch and you saw all the Patrick Roy (goaltender) clones out of Quebec. Edmonton had a rich hockey tradition long before the Oilers of the NHL, the Mercurys, the Oil Kings, the WHA Oilers. It's there but our generation is the one the kids now remember the most.

What makes Craig MacTavish an effective coach? Both Glen Sather and Craig MacTavish were defensive specialists. Any comparison between Glen Sather's playing style and Craig's?

Craig played at a higher level than Glen, who was a scrappy player. Glen earned every game and every year in the NHL by being scrappy and competitive.

Obviously, he had some ability. MacT's game was part scrappy, but also very intelligent. He's a very bright guy, very articulate, progressive at thinking about the game. He has a good handle on the players, not too close and not too far. Having played the game, he has a good sense of when to push and when not to push.

He has a great understanding of the Xs and Os of the game. He's really a new-wave coach. For a time, there were the Xs and Os guys who came out of college or the Hockey Canada program and they were the students of the game but they didn't have much (NHL) experience. They were teachers who became hockey coaches. Then there are the ex-players who don't have the technical background in the kind of stuff that Hockey Canada prepared. Craig is the combination of both. He has the ability and the knowledge.

Then, there are a lot of guys like Wayne Fleming, who was an assistant on Team Canada's World Cup staff who played the game and came out of the Hockey Canada background. The coaching fraternity has advanced through both these types of backgrounds. The three things that have improved the most in my time in hockey are the level of fitness, goaltending and coaching.

Craig played through that era and was a student of these advances. He is probably underappreciated because of where we are geographically and where we finished. We've done pretty well while at the same time having to move players like Billy Guerin and others. He has a winning record and not a lot of coaches do. He'll have great success in this game for a lot of years.

You had to be proud of the World Cup performances of Oilers' Eric Brewer and Ryan Smyth. Brewer is only 25 but he's already been an NHL All-Star, an Olympic gold medal winner, won two gold medals for Canada in the 2003 and 2004 World Championships and now the World Cup title. Whatever happened to defensemen developing more slowly than forwards?

He has natural ability. Most of the star players have the ability and character to go with it. Apply good coaching to that and the right amount of pushing to get players to the next level. He's a smart guy and has been able at a young age to play in the Olympics and in the World Cup. He has been given a large role and has been able to take it and run with it. He takes the responsibility and can handle a leadership role. He's had the good fortune to play with Jason Smith on the Oilers. He played on Team Canada with Rob Blake. That goes a long way to helping him through the rest of his career.

Is Ryan Smyth a power forward, a skill player or whatever you need that night?

(Laughs) All of the above, yeah. Ryan's best attributes are his love for the game and his work ethic. I don't think he's a particularly punishing player, but ask a defenseman playing against him. They take their licks. He's gangly and his arms are all over the place. He'll give it as much as he takes it. There are times you look at him and think his skill level isn't what everybody else's is but then he'll make an unbelievable play and you'll say, wow.

He plays hockey the way it should be played. On our team, we need him to be more of a scorer. It's hard to play the kind of game he played against the Americans (in the World Cup), game in and game out, but when you come to these short tournaments, the adrenaline is so high. In the NHL, playing 82 games and then the playoffs, it's hard to play that crash-and-bang style. You can do it but chances are you'll be less productive in terms of goals and assists. But he can do it and that's why he played a big part of Team Canada. The team has guys who may be a little better skill-wise but think back to 1972 and Canada had guys like J.P. Parise. You can't have all one type of hockey player and Ryan is an all-around player.

Your rookie goalie last season, Ty Conklin, was named to the American World Cup team. Although he didn't play, that was still a nice compliment. What do you think he gained from the experience? How will it help him progress?

Ty came out of nowhere from most people's perspective. He was a pretty sought-after free agent coming out of the University of New Hampshire. We had a need for a goalie so we signed him. He did everything in college, his last couple of years, and he did everything in the American Hockey League. So, it's no surprise to me that he has come to this point.

He's very athletic and coachable, but his best attribute is that he's really competitive. I told the American management staff that there are goalies who let in a goal or two and it ruins their game. Ty doesn't seem to be that way. Grant Fuhr was that way. The old line about Grant was that he would let in five goals but he wouldn't give up the sixth and you'd win 6-5. To me, Ty has that ability. There's room for improvement in his game. He's had only one season in the NHL and less than that as the starter.

He was wonderful in the 2004 World Championships. I liked the fact he was gaining the experience because it bodes well for us. I was like a nervous father, hoping he wasn't going to get crushed by the Czechs because of their team, on paper, compared to what the Americans had. But full credit to those guys, they went into the Czechs' building and knocked them off. I was cheering like crazy. That was phenomenal for him and phenomenal for USA Hockey, because they really needed that. Hopefully, it will be phenomenal for the Oilers organization.