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The conversation among Sue Wojciechowski's new co-workers was full of typical small talk until one day, shortly after she started at accounting firm Arthur Andersen, it took an odd turn.
One of the people at lunch began to pepper another — a guy named Stan — with questions about hockey contracts. Wojciechowski didn’t find that strange.
But she did find it unusual that the questioner was so interested to know what Stan’s father thought.
Wojciechowski, who knew almost nothing about hockey, found this rather comical. So she began to joke about what her father — a Franklin Park policeman — thought about the issue.
“Everybody, especially the guy asking the question, got really quiet,” Wojciechowski said. “And the guy asking the question asked me, ‘Do you have any idea who his dad is?’ And I was like, ‘Obviously not.’ ”
And that’s how Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman met his future wife.
Twenty-four years later, Stan is still peppered with hockey questions. But instead of being asked about what his dad — legendary coach and general manager Scotty Bowman, a senior adviser with the Hawks who retired from coaching in 2002 — thinks about a variety of topics, now everyone wants to know what’s on Stan’s mind.
Stan Bowman, who was named after the Stanley Cup, gets plenty of hockey questions from friends, fans and media, of course, but some of the most pointed ones come from his three kids: sons Will, 16, and Cam, 13, and daughter Graycen, 7.
Will and Cam play for the Chicago Mission, a Tier 1 program, and have set their sights on the NHL. Graycen is the only girl on an all-boys team and has no problem taking on her brothers in epic basement hockey battles at their Roscoe Village home.
“She's the craziest out of all of us,” Will Bowman said.
For Stan, the hockey questions his kids ask are a wonderful reminder of when he would sit by his father’s side and listen to him talk shop with scouts and assistant coaches.
“There’s a lot of similarities there,” said Stan, 45, who took over as Hawks GM in July 2009. “As a kid my favorite thing to do was just listen. It was different back then, obviously there was no internet, there were no computers in the ’80s. He would come home and every night he would call his coaches and talk about the practice that day or talk about other teams.
“There was less information at your disposal to read, hockeywise. So he loved to talk on the phone, loved to talk hockey. And my favorite thing to do was just listen to his conversations.”
Stan accompanies the Hawks on nearly every road trip, and his travels don’t subside much when the season ends and his focus shifts to the draft and free agency. Still, he tries to make as many of Will and Cam’s games as possible.
One of Will’s favorite memories is when he and his dad were in Lincoln, Neb., earlier this year and their flight was canceled.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” Will recalled. “We ended up renting a car and driving home the seven or eight hours. I loved the ride home. We talked all different hockey things. I love to pick his brain about all different rules in the NHL. Technicalities, upcoming drafts. Any question I can ask, he’s always willing to answer. I’m sure it’s annoying at some point.”
Car rides with dad won’t end but might be less frequent for Will, who is leaving in the fall to finish high school and play hockey at a prep school in Massachusetts.
“It’s bittersweet that he’s not going to be around, but I travel so much I don’t even get to see him that much during the year,” Stan said. “I’m going to miss him for sure, but I’ll get a chance to go see him. It’s all part of a process for allowing your kids to spread their wings when they’re ready. And he's ready.”
Will is ready. Dad too. But is Mom?
“The answer is, yes, we’re ready," said Sue Bowman, who owns and operates a dog-walking business. “It’s absolutely going to change the family dynamic. He’s a very responsible, independent kid, so I think he’s going to do well and he’s ready for the challenge. He’s been my right-hand man around here with Stan gone all the time.
“I’m getting all choked up talking about him leaving.”
Will is the only one of the kids old enough to remember Stan’s health scare in 2007, when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. After Stan went into remission following treatment, the cancer returned the next year, and Stan needed heavy chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant. He has been cancer-free for a decade.
The experience was frightening, to be sure, and Stan had moments wondering if he would get to see his children grow up.
“I’m not really sure it drastically changed him,” Sue Bowman said. “He’s always been laid back and focused on the right stuff. He’s an extremely hard worker. He doesn’t do a whole lot of stuff for himself, really. If he has any faults that’s probably his fault. He works and works and works and then in his free time he does everything for his family.
“If he has a minute of free time he’s flying off to see his kids play hockey or running to see a school event or coming home to help me around here. He finally let himself play golf yesterday. I know he’d love to play golf 24/7. He just doesn’t have a lot of free time.”
With a lot of night games during the school year, it’s difficult for the Bowman kids to get to many Hawks games. But Will last season started driving, so he piled friends into his car for some trips to the United Center.
Cam doesn’t have that same luxury yet, so he has taken to spending time at the Hawks training facility, helping put out equipment and doing laundry.
“I think it's a good way for me to help out but not really get in the way of my dad’s job,” Cam said. “Because he’s upstairs scouting and I’m more ice level and helping the actual players out. So it’s a different thing because outside of playing hockey and going to the park with my friends, I don’t really do much. I feel like that's a good thing to do.”
Being the children of an NHL GM affords opportunities most kids only dream of, which Will and Cam don’t take for granted. But there can be a downside to being a Bowman in Chicago.
“In English class you’re tasked with writing a personal essay,” Will said. “And I (wrote) about being a Bowman is really a double-edged sword. It’s great that it’s so well known to the hockey community with my grandfather and now my father, but you get looked at a lot differently from a lot of different people.
“Whether it be kids you’re playing against, parents sometimes behind your back, other coaches — a lot of assumptions are made, and I think there’s a lot to live up to, to be honest. Scotty Bowman, Stan Bowman, there’s a whole legacy to live up to.”
Sunday is Father’s Day, and the Bowmans will be together.
But a day later, Stan leaves for the week for the NHL draft in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Later this summer, Will departs for prep school.
And a life in hockey goes on.
jgreenfield@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @jcgreenx
