Winter Classic at Notre Dame special to Blackhawks GM

CHICAGO -- Stan Bowman got his first glimpse of the University of Notre Dame when he was 13.

The Chicago Blackhawks general manager, who grew up in Buffalo, visited the campus with a friend whose brother attended the university. After walking around the campus and watching a Fighting Irish football game at Notre Dame Stadium, Bowman was hooked.
"I was saying to myself, 'It'd be really neat to go to school here one day,'" Bowman said. "So that started the process."
In 1991, Bowman arrived as a freshman. Four years later, he graduated with degrees in finance and computer applications. Six years after that, he began his tenure with the Blackhawks as a special assistant to the general manager.
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Notre Dame remains a special place for Bowman, who will visit his alma mater when the Blackhawks play the Boston Bruins in the 2019 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at Notre Dame Stadium on Jan. 1 (1 p.m. ET; NBC, TVAS, SN).
Bowman, 45, considers his years at Notre Dame, located in South Bend, Indiana, some of the best of his life. The connections to the school and friends made there remain strong.
"I think the biggest thing about that time in your life is you spend so many times together," Bowman said. "At high school, you go to school with friends, come home and do activities with different people. [At college], from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, you're with the same people and you do the same thing the next day. You spend so much time together, you can cover a lot of ground in four years. It's like you've known them for 20."
When Bowman arrived at Notre Dame as a freshman, he wasn't in peak health. About a week before he got to campus, Bowman broke his ankle when a friend rolled the golf cart they were using. He also had walking pneumonia.
"Luckily my dorm was right across from the infirmary," Bowman said. "I was sick and injured, on crutches until I got [to Notre Dame]. Then I had to do a week of breathing treatments because I had pneumonia. It wasn't the best start, but I got over it."
From a public perspective, Bowman, the executive, appears measured and stoic, especially when facing the media. But Marty Attea, who was a roommate of Bowman's during their sophomore year at Notre Dame, knows the part of Bowman's personality that doesn't come out in front of the camera.

"He has a killer sense of humor," said Attea, a managing director at Barclays Capital. "It's a slow-build, long-burn type where he sets you up. If you had a big, puffy ego, he'd be slowly flattering you until you realized, 'You're totally mocking me, aren't you?' His delivery and his poker face were always so subtle and so good. I wouldn't want to play poker with the guy."
Bowman spent his freshman and sophomore years at Keenan Hall, a 150-room dorm built in 1957 that stands today. He played some recreational tennis and golf. Attea said Bowman is competitive, "in sports of any kind, be it foosball, tennis or golf. And he has a wicked serve."
But Bowman spent most of his sporting time playing hockey on club and dorm teams, winning a dorm championship his senior year.
"We got this varsity jacket, like a letterman jacket," Bowman said. "It was a big deal, right? It was something you aspired to. I wasn't going to get one for being on the varsity football team, but I got it the other way."
The seeds for Bowman's future as a GM were also planted at Notre Dame, albeit unintentionally.
He had just finished his freshman year when he drove to Chicago to watch his father, the legendary Scotty Bowman, coach the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 4-0 sweep against the Blackhawks in the 1992 Stanley Cup Final for the sixth of nine championships he won as a coach.
Stan and his mother talked about his future on the drive home to Buffalo.
"She asked what I wanted to eventually do. I said, 'I'd love to work in hockey someday,'" Bowman said. "She was surprised because I'd never really expressed the desire to be a coach. I think I said, 'some kind of management capacity would be fun, and the ultimate would be if [dad and I] could work together one day on the same team.'"
Scotty Bowman has been the senior advisor to the Blackhawks since 2008, working in conjunction with Stan. Together they have won the Stanley Cup three times, most recently in 2015.
But at Notre Dame, the partnership wasn't reality, just a dream; one Bowman didn't articulate often.

Steve Kelley, Bowman's roommate during junior and senior year, also majored in the same fields as Bowman -- finance and computer applications. He said Bowman mentioned his hockey hopes infrequently.
"It wasn't, 'Hey, I'm going to be a coach or GM in the NHL.' It was never anything overt," said Kelley, who is CEO of EdgeWave, a cybersecurity company based in San Diego. "I do remember him in the background, you could see a desire there and once or twice mentioned it, but it was never anything that just was very clear from the get-go."
Meanwhile, Bowman concentrated on his studies and found inspiration from some instructors. Tom Morris, professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame from 1981-96, was one of those teachers. Bowman took Introduction to Philosophy, a popular class taught by Morris that sometimes had as many as 400 students.
"You'd talk about Aristotle and Socrates, but he also related philosophy to things in your daily life," Bowman said. "It made an impact on me. I ended up taking philosophy classes after that because I got interested in the topic. The philosophical side of things has always intrigued me, and it carries on to this day."
Morris, author of more than 15 books, including "If Aristotle Ran General Motors," is flattered that his lessons stuck with Bowman.
"He's lived up to his name, right? The Stanley name," Morris said. "Plato and Aristotle would be smiling right now. They didn't want to create professional philosophers. They wanted to enhance people's lives and help people make a difference in the world, and Stan seems like a shining example of that."
Bowman rekindled his relationship with Notre Dame in 2013, when the Blackhawks held their first week of training camp on campus. The decision was more about getting the players together for a few days as a bonding exercise more than going to Bowman's alma mater.

With Notre Dame 90 miles from Chicago and boasting a new arena, Compton Family Ice Arena, which opened in 2011, it proved to be a perfect fit.
Notre Dame associate hockey coach Andy Slaggert, whose sons Landon, 16, and Carter, 13, play hockey with Bowman's sons Will, 16, and Cam, 13, said hosting the Blackhawks was a thrill, and remains so.
"We were just trying to make sure it was an enjoyable event for the organization and the players specifically, but not overwhelming, too," Slaggert said. "One year, it was around the football game [when Notre Dame defeated Georgia Tech 30-22 on Sept. 19, 2015] and they got to go to a pep rally and we introduced the players. Other years they haven't come in on football weeks and have been able to golf and use the facilities. They've also had some interactions with our players, which has been beneficial with our guys."
The Blackhawks have held a portion of training camp at Notre Dame four times, most recently in 2017.
Bowman's road to working in hockey started with an idea born at Notre Dame. Yet, those who went to school with Bowman knew he'd find success in whatever field he chose to pursue.
"He fit in wherever he was, and you could always see a spark of intelligence and competitiveness," Kelley said. "It's not surprising he's risen to great heights in his career, and the team as well. He's an all-around good guy and it's great to see him do so well."
Photos courtesy of Chicago Blackhawks