Matthew DiBiase - Bench Bosses: The NHLs Coaching Elite

This book is dedicated to the late Rudy DiMemmo (19302012): born American, first son, grandson, brother, cousin, husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, and best friend to those who loved him and love him still.

IN MEMORIAM

Maryann Barbara Heavener DiBiase
Frank Fortunato DiBiase Sr.

They both died too soon to see this book in print.

Rest in Peace.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

Vince Lombardi

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

Confucius

A fter having coached in the National Hockey League (NHL) for nearly 30 years, it is a privilege and an honour to write this foreword for a fascinating book on coaching personalities and their careers.

At the beginning of my coaching career, to stand behind the bench and try to match wits with the legendary Punch Imlach of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toe Blake of the Montreal Canadiens was a dream job.

The tactics of Roger Neilson, with his innovative style applied to so many different teams; to the successes of Glen Sather, with the four-time Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers in the mid- to late 1980s; preceded by the victories of Al Arbour, with his four-time Stanley Cup champion New York Islanders in the early 1980s, are stories all by themselves.

Moving on to coaches such as Jacques Lemaire, winning with the New Jersey Devils and then enjoying expansion success with the Minnesota Wild, and Joel Quenneville, coaching the St. Louis Blues, the Colorado Avalanche, and winning Stanley Cups with the Chicago Blackhawks; to Ken Hitchcock of the Stanley Cup champion Dallas Stars (who now is with the St. Louis Blues) provides great insights into what methods and styles are successful in hockey these days.

The book also delves into two of my former players: Dave Tippett of the Arizona Coyotes and Lindy Ruff of the Dallas Stars, who are lifers in the art of longevity because of their coaching philosophies and abilities.

Readers will be able to realize the successes of Mike Babcock of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the only coach in the Triple Gold Club: winning the World Junior, the Stanley Cup, and Olympic gold in his illustrious coaching career.

I am sure all of these coaches will have the same feelings I have always had when leading a team: having skillful players with a work ethic makes coaching such a rewarding profession.

We have all had the same ingredients to allow us the careers we have.

Scotty Bowman

S ports debates usually focus on the best players at any given position in any particular sport; seldom do the debates extend to head coaches or managers. Though there are books that have examined the great head coaches or managers in the four major North American sports (baseball, football, basketball, and hockey), the majority of them consist of biographical, anecdotal, and occasionally humorous portrayals without any systemic analysis based on the coachs actual performance.

In the past 16 years, only two published books have undertaken such analyses: one for baseball managers and the other for pro football head coaches (more on both shortly). The book you are about to read marks the first attempt at rating the most successful head coaches in the history of professional hockey by using a disciplined, systemic approach to evaluating coaching excellence.