Puckstruck: Distracted, Delighted and Distressed by Canada's Hockey Obsession

by Stephen Smith

Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize

In Puckstruck, Stephen Smith chronicles his wideeyed and sometimes wincing wander through hockey’s literature, language, and history. On this journey to discover what the game has to say about who we are as Canadians, he seeks to answer some essential riddles. Can hockey make you a better person? What exactly is the Swedes’ problem? Where did the hook check go? Should those men really be permitted to keep punching each other in the head? If hockey is the best of us, is it also the worst? Is there hope?

Genres: Hockey, Sports, Nonfiction, History

440 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2014

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name
For other authors of this name, see:

Stephen Smith - American Surgeon, Public Health
Stephen Smith - African Studies
Stephen Smith - Contemporary Non Fiction, Journalism

Reviews

[Janet Hutchinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not often big on hockey books, but I enjoyed this one. His meanderings were interesting and several times I laughed out loud. Perhaps a little long.....

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the author's meandering style of prose might be a selling feature for some, I found it cumbersome, and the lack of a clear narrative plotline made it harder for me to invest in the story, such as it was

[Joe M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the vegan bacon cheeseburger of hockey books. The author notes he enjoyed this meal late in the book, but trust me, getting that far will be a challenge. And for a vegan bacon cheeseburger, it’s never worth it. The whole first chapter is a rambling of thought, not much to do about anything. It would have been somewhat entertaining if the first chapter was smaller than the first third of the book. The author spends a lot of time complaining about violence in hockey and how he wished hockey could go back to being played the way it was in its early days. Then he would complain about the violence in hockey in its early days. This book was strange, the words seemed to indicate a love for hockey, but if you’re reading between the lines you’ll find the truth of resentment: that hockey has no true place in the author’s life, most likely because hockey had no place for him.

[Maurice Tougas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Smith set out to explain how and why hockey has maintained such a death-grip on the Canadian psyche by reading every hockey book he could find. The books number in the hundreds, and he has distilled thousands of pages of knowledge, lore, opinion and history into 398 highly entertaining, enlightening, often very funny and always thoughtful pages. Hockey fans will love it (prepare to have your opinions challenged), non-hockey fans should read it to get an idea of what this crazy game is all about, and why Canadians love it so.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Smith seeks to read all popular hockey books and movies into a synthesis about the centrality of hockey in Canadian identity. Why does hockey continue to appeal despite the troubled nature of the violence, concussions, and bad behavior by the central representation of hockey, the NHL. Smith argues that hockey has had trouble expressing itself, and serves as a channel for Canadians to channel negative feelings into.

[Ernie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often with interesting anecdotes, well -researched and referenced, this book hit many targets, but completely ignores the malignancy of racism in hockey. No book on baseball would omit reference to Jackie Robinson, but the author ignores the issue entirely, with not even a single mention of Willy O’rae,
Herb Carnegie.

[Adrian]

Author claims to have read a vast number of hockey books and this book takes the reader on a tour of them and much else besides. He has lots to say about hockey language, the history of the game, the evolution of fighting and why it has to end, and the '72 Canada-Russia series. His personality seems to be caught somewhere between the intellect of Ken Dryden and the cruelty of Bobby Clarke and he has good profiles of both these guys. I got a half dozen good reading recommendations. All non-fiction. Smith admits that most hockey fiction is just bad.