The Power of Two: Carl Brewer's Battle with Hockey's Power Brokers

by Susan Foster, Carl Brewer, Stevie Cameron (Foreword by)

The Power of Two is the riveting story of how former NHL star Carl Brewer and his partner Susan Foster took on the hockey establishment over the issue of player pensions. Together they uncovered massive fraud, corruption, and betrayal of trust, ultimately helping bring down the powerful NHL executive director R. Alan Eagleson.

Genres: Hockey, Sports

340 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2006

Reviews

[Bryce · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very important, must read, if you are a sports fan and more so if you are a Hockey fan.

Very disturbing to find out how the 40's-60's players were treated. Players were abuse, used and screwed over of their pride, respect, dignity and especially money. Sadly still today in the NHL, a lot of the names of trophies are of pieces of garbage like the Norris or Conn Smyth (funny the pun of his name) trophies.

How dirty the Canadian Governement, officials and RCMP and the Law Society and the corrupt players (made the big bucks) and helped shield Al Eagleson to screw over the rest of their co workers. May they never have a nights rest of their part of the crimes committed against the NHLPA.

Al Eagleson remains one of the sickest and most disgusting humans ever to be involved in history. He is a predator. As a teen, when this scum bag was being trotted into the only spotlight he deserved, court and jail, I was interested to understand the depths of his pathetic existence. John Ziegler was another scum bag (may he not rest in piece) I knew very little about then Commissioner Ziegler,until this book. His involvement in helping Al, directly or indirectly he knew, stealing from the players .

It also has a beautiful story of two partners in Sue and Carl (Brewer) lives together. Their love, travels and bond and their business of kicking, that eras, NHL and NHLPA Executive collective asses.

[Don Sparrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are from my era (grew up in Toronto in the 50's) you were inevitably a Toronto Maple Leaf fan and you lived and died with your heroes of this era.(Sloan,Armstrong,Duff,Olmstead Mahovlich, Kelly, Nevin, Bathgate, Keon, Harris, Horton, Stanley, Hillman, Douglas, Baun & the incredibly talented Carl Brewer).This is the story of Brewer's ( along with his lifetime partner "Susan Foster" 25 year battle with coach Punch Imlach,Toronto Maple Leaf management, The NHL, the NHL Players association, Bobby Clarke and most of the all the devious, treacherous Alan Eagleson ; who was not only the most powerful man in hockey but "The most powerful man in Canada".He was unbelievably connected in Canada with politicians, NHL owners, International hockey and celebrities having bought them all off over the years with proceeds that belonged to the NHL Players Association. Its incredible in the end that he; one of the most vile people to have ever lived in Canada; was finally brought down most in part to investigations by the FBI in the U.S.A. Canadian authorities (RCMP) seemed reluctant to prosecute him and would not agree to extradition requests from the Americans. (unbelievable ). I guess that with the current political scandals that scar our country it doesn't look like we have learned anything from this debauchery of our justice system. Still in the end Eagleson was able to negotiate a sweet heart deal of only 6 months in jail with his Canadian connections.( In the U.S.A. he would have served 15 years ) Carl & Susan's determined fight for justice over so many years with so many set backs is well documented here.Every NHL player ( retired or not ) owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Carl & Susan. If you're from my era and a hockey fan I'm quite sure you will enjoy this read. My actual rating is 3.5 stars.

[Alan Haffner · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book recapping Carl Brewer and Susan Foster's battle with the the NHL hockey establishment and Alan Eagleson.
(Hence, "The Power of Two.")
The main issue was the poor compensation for retired players even though the money was there.
Corruption and greed was unveiled. The downfall of Eagleson.

It is also a good bio of Brewer, a great and enigmatic hockey player.
From his beginnings in minor hockey to his career with the Leafs, through his salary squabbles with Ballard and Imlach, to his international career in Canada, and Finland, the book ties it all together.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book super interesting. It was really cool to see the fight Carl and Susan had to have to be able to take down Eagleson and get the players their rights. I didn't realize just how bad the league had been before with not paying salaries properly and it was cool to see how they were held accountable.

[Teebz Hbic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review for The Power of Two can be found on Hockey Blog In Canada.