"Have you ever seen anything to match the buzz surrounding Mats Sundin during this off-season?

Will he or won't he play? If he doesn't retire, does he go to Vancouver? The Canadiens? Back to Toronto, maybe? Elsewhere? How do you turn down a $20-million, two-year contract at age 37?

Hardly a day has passed without Sundin being mentioned in newspapers everywhere, as well as being a favourite topic among talking heads on television and radio. He's been a bigger story than Marian Hossa going to the Detroit Red Wings. Bigger than any of the moves made on July 1. Bigger than Evgeni Malkin's long-term deal with Pittsburgh.

Is this Splendid Swede the NHL's biggest story, however?

I don't think so.

My choice is Scotty Bowman's decision to join the Chicago Blackhawks as their senior advisor of hockey operations.

The reason: while the Sundin story is all about money, Bowman's is all about family. It's about what really matters. It's about Scotty's son, Stan, 35, who's entering his second season as assistant general manager in Chicago. It's about a father supporting his son on the ice - and a lot more off it.

Stan Bowman has been going through a terrible time for the last 18 months.

He discovered he had a severe case of Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Then, news the Bowman family had been praying for: remission. And then it returned. Another round of treatment. A successful stem- cell transplant. Now: a second remission.

"I will be able to help my son on and off the ice," Scotty told me a few days ago. "He's in remission for a second time. It's been a tough 18 months."

The Bowmans have five children (Alicia, David, Bob, Nancy and Stan), but it's mostly about support for Stan now. All about helping a loved one.

I knew Scotty long before Sam Pollock hired him to replace Al MacNeil as the Canadiens' coach only few weeks after they had won the Stanley Cup in 1971. I knew him casually when he coached junior hockey teams for a few seasons, got to know him a little better when he scouted for the Canadiens, and a lot better when he was hired as an assistant coach by the St. Louis Blues in time for the NHL's expansion to 12 teams from six in 1967-68. A few weeks into the season, and with the Blues in last place in their division, Bowman became the team's head coach.

Pollock's eye for talent rarely failed him, and nowhere was this more evident than in his hiring of Bowman, whose Canadiens won five Stanley Cups including four in a row with one of the organization's truly great dynasties. He probably would have won several more if it were not for the fact that here he was on June 11, 1979, shortly after a 4th consecutive Cup, saying goodbye to the Montreal media. He was leaving, he said, because he no longer felt comfortable with two people - one within, the other outside the organization.

General manager Irving Grundman was the inside man. I was the outside guy."