The History Book Club discussion
SPORTS HISTORY/ HOBBIES/GAMES
>
HOCKEY
date
newest »
newest »
Awesome. 
Wayne Coffey This book discusses the 1980 gold medal winning men's Hockey team and what happened before and after the win. Interesting stuff.
Mod
Gordie Howe,age 86, the veteran star and Hockey Hall of Famer, has suffered a stroke. He is in stable condition. Howe is known as "Mr. Hockey" and spent most of his illustrious career with the Detroit Red Wings. Have a speedy recovery, Gordie.
Mod
One of the greatest sports franchises in history. Lovingly called "The Habs" (les habitants) by their fans, they are a joy to watch, year after year.Montreal Canadiens
by Jim Barber (no photo)Synopsis:
n 1917, the Montreal Canadiens became one of the four founding teams of the National Hockey League. Since then, the team has enjoyed countless breathtaking triumphs. Not only have they won more Stanley Cup Championships than any other team in the NHL, they have also boasted some of the best players the league has ever seen. Through it all, they have maintained a fan following that is unparalleled in its fierce devotion and pride. This is the story of the Montreal Canadiens -- the most sucessful sports franchise in North America.
Mod
by Stephen J. Harper (no photo)Synopsis:
In the tumultuous beginnings of hockey, the fights were as much off the ice as on it. A Great Game is about the hockey heroes and hard-boiled businessmen who built the game, and the rise and fall of legendary teams pursuing the Stanley Cup. With a historian’s perspective and fan’s passion, Stephen Harper presents a riveting and often surprising portrait of the early years of hockey, capturing everything from the physical contests on the rinks to the battles behind the scenes.
A Great Game shows how much about hockey has stayed the same. Rough play, fervent hometown loyalties, owner-player contract disputes, partisan news coverage, and big money were issues from the get-go. Was hockey to be a game of obsessed amateurs playing for the love of the sport, or was it a game for paid professionals who would give fans what they wanted?
A century ago rinks could melt, and by halftime the blades screwed to the players’ shoes could be sinking in mud, but the hockey pioneers were unstoppable. Teams sprang up across North America, from Victoria to Winnipeg, Halifax to Montreal, and Detroit to Pittsburgh. In the Queen City, in spite of the fanatical opposition of amateur hockey leaders, early teams such as the Toronto Professionals of 1908 and the Toronto Blue Shirts of 1914 took turns battling for Toronto’s very first Stanley Cup. These “forgotten Leafs” would lay the groundwork for the world’s most profitable hockey franchise.
In A Great Game Stephen Harper brings alive the history of hockey’s first decades and pays passionate tribute to the earliest star players of the game. This entertaining and original book will captivate fans from start to finish.
Mod
by George Robert FostySynopsis:
A 5000 year history, from 2500 BC to 1972, Splendid Is The Sun ranks as one of the greatest hockey histories ever written. A groundbreaking work, rich in research and detail. Splendid Is The Sun covers the roots of hockey from ancient times, through both World Wars, and the Cold War, documenting the growth of American, Canadian, and Russian hockey culminating in the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey showdown. A monumental history that is truly one-of-a-kind.
One of hockey's icons, I saw him play many times at the old Igloo in Pittsburgh. A true gentleman.The Magnificent One: The Story of Mario Lemieux
by Michael McKinley (no photo)Synopsis:
Our in-depth biography details Mario Lemieux's incredible story-his first tentative steps on the ice as a two-year-old, his rise as hockey's most ballyhooed prospect, his glory years with the Pittsburgh Penguins, his successful fight against Hodgkin's disease, his early retirement and purchase of the Pittsburgh franchise, and finally, his triumphant return to the ice in December 2000. Also included are an eight-page, full-color photo insert, Mario trivia, and Mario's full career statistics.
One of the greatest hockey players who ever took the ice.Bobby Orr
by Frederic P. Miller(no photo)Synopsis:
A defenceman, Bobby Orr is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest hockey players of all time. Orr played junior hockey with the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League, and spent most of his National Hockey League career with the Boston Bruins before joining the Chicago Blackhawks for his final two seasons. Orr won two Stanley Cup championships with the Bruins when Boston defeated the St. Louis Blues in the 1970 Stanley Cup Final in four games and the New York Rangers in the 1972 Stanley Cup Final in six games, scoring the clinching goals in both series, and was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP both years
Mod
Release date: October 20, 2015
Hockey Night Fever:Mullets, Mayhem and the Game's Coming of Age in the 1970s
by
Stephen ColeSynopsis:
Modern hockey was born in the sport's wild, sensational, sometimes ugly Seventies growth spurt. The forces at play in the decade's battle for hockey supremacy-dazzling speed vs. brute force-are now, for better or worse, part of hockey's DNA. This book is a welcome reappraisal of the ten years that changed how the sport was played and experienced. Informed by first-hand interviews with players and game officials, and sprinkled with sidebars on the art and artifacts that defined Seventies hockey, the book brings dramatically alive hockey's most eventful years.
I love hockey, Jerome, so this book looks like a lot of fun. The greatest mullet in hockey was worn by Jaromir Jagr of the Pittsburgh Penguins!!!
The Super Bowl of hockey, the Stanley Cup championship is the ultimate goal of every team in the NHL.The Stanley Cup
by Martin Gitlin (no photo)Synopsis
Ever since Montreal won the first Stanley Cup in 1893, teams have aimed to win the silver trophy for themselves. Every spring 16 teams face off in the playoffs to become the National Hockey League champion. Discover the greatest teams, players, and historic moments from the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Pittsburgh Penguins win the 2016 Stanley Cup. Way to go Pens!!!On a sadder note, Mr. Hockey , Gordie Howe passed at age 88. He played longer and better than any professional hockey player in the US and made his last goal at age 55!!! The world of hockey has lost its biggest star. Thanks for the memories, Gordie.
My congratulations to the Pens too. It was a long season that finally came together.
In December, they were not even in the race!!!! Some great coaching and of course, great players. It will be a hot time in Steeltown when the Pens come home from the coast.A funny little aside......Pittsburgh, which has won every major sports trophy has done it on the road and not won the deciding game in Pittsburgh since the fantastic 7th game walk-off home run by Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski in the 1960 World Series against the heavily favored Yankees of Mantle, Berra, and Maris!!!!
I had seen that about not winning at home. It did look rather dark for them before the All-Star break.
Mod
Release date: November 15, 2018
Hockey: A Global History
by Stephen Hardy (no photo)Synopsis:
Long considered Canadian, ice hockey is in truth a worldwide phenomenon--and has been for centuries. In Hockey: A Global History, Stephen Hardy and Andrew C. Holman draw on twenty-five years of research to present THE monumental end-to-end history of the sport.
Here is the story of on-ice stars and organizational visionaries, venues and classic games, the evolution of rules and advances in equipment, and the ascendance of corporations and instances of bureaucratic chicanery. Hardy and Holman chart modern hockey's "birthing" in Montreal and follow its migration from Canada south to the United States and east to Europe. The story then shifts from the sport's emergence as a nationalist battlefront to the movement of talent across international borders to the game of today, where men and women at all levels of play lace 'em up on the shinny ponds of Saskatchewan, the wide ice of the Olympics, and across the breadth of Asia.
Sweeping in scope and vivid with detail, Hockey: A Global History is the saga of how the coolest game changed the world--and vice versa.
Mod
Mod
"Stick and ball games have been around since ancient times. But when, where and how did the stick and the puck get combined with the ice and the skate to make the game of ice hockey we recognise today?
There was a lot of debate about where hockey started, but this generation conceded that it was probably in Nova Scotia or Quebec, and it came out of a marriage of the games that the native Indians played with those that the Irish, English and Scottish brought over. They merged to be a game that you played with a puck on a sheet of ice in wintertime. The rules of the game as we know them probably got codified at McGill University in Montreal. That’s the cradle of the game.
Some argue that it was the introduction of superhuman speed that comes with skates, and with the invention of the Acme spring skate in 1865, that made hockey so exciting to so many. What do you think? What makes ice hockey so enduringly fascinating to its legions of fans?
I think certainly it’s the speed. Early skates took you twice or three times as fast as you could run. Speed makes hockey a dynamic sport. Then you add the physical aspect of it. Many early hockey players also played rugby. Hockey has speed and the physical qualities of games like rugby – I think that really appeals to people. And look, in the heart of winter, especially back in the 19th century when winters were colder and entertainment was harder to come by, people had to amuse themselves doing something. Hockey was one of the most dynamic ways to divert yourself during a long cold winter.
Unlike a sport like American football, the rules of hockey are somewhat simple, right?
The rules make themselves easily understood. There are five a side, you can’t advance into the offensive zone ahead of the puck and there are lots of rules regarding penalties, like in football – but at its most basic, just get the puck past the goalie into that net. For over a century people have been trying to figure out the best ways to do it.
There’s a lot of yin and yang to it. Sometimes the offence scores lots of goals, then the coaching catches up and it becomes a defence game.
In that way it’s a little bit like football too. But at its most basic, as the hockey expression has it, put the biscuit in the basket.
What else do I need to know to enjoy the game?
Anyone would be able to pick up the basic rules by watching for a period or two. Usually by then you’ve also seen the speed and the excitement that it generates. It’s a pretty compelling spectacle for the first-timer."
More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruc...
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
Children's Classic but Ageless
by Roch Carrier (no photo)Synopsis
In the days of Roch’s childhood, winters in the village of Ste. Justine were long. Life centered around school, church, and the hockey rink, and every boy’s hero was Montreal Canadiens hockey legend Maurice Richard. Everyone wore Richard’s number 9.
They laced their skates like Richard. They even wore their hair like Richard.
When Roch outgrows his cherished Canadiens sweater, his mother writes away for a new one. Much to Roch’s horror, he is sent the blue and white sweater of the rival Toronto Maple Leafs, dreaded and hated foes to his beloved team. How can Roch face the other kids at the rink?
Review:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
The Hockey Sweater, by Quebec writer Roch Carrier, seems like a good place to start. This book is so revered that I read it inspired the illustration on the back of the Canadian five-dollar bill. Please give us a précis of the plot and tell us what makes this 1985 illustrated version of the short story such a children’s classic.
The hockey scene on the five-dollar bill, showing a game in motion outdoors on a frozen pond, gives you a pretty good sense of the kind of picture that Roch Carrier painted of post-war Quebec in The Hockey Sweater. It’s told very simply as well, which is why it’s a book that could be read by children. But adults can get just as much out of it. It’s like The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry – a very simple tale but it has layers and layers.
The book is about a young boy who lives in a small Quebec town, where they never hear or speak English, whose mother orders him a hockey sweater from a catalogue – Eaton’s catalogue was famous in Canada for most of the 20th century.
The mother inadvertently orders the wrong team jersey. In fact, she orders the jersey of the English-speaking team. This young boy has to go out on to the ice in this small Quebec town, where everyone is a fan of the Montreal Canadiens, wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, and the story is about the life lessons he learns from that experience.
What does The Hockey Sweater teach us about the love of the game and its devoted followers?
The reason the book is revered is that it teaches about not only the game but also its place in Canada, particularly in 1930s Quebec.
The passion for the Montreal Canadiens became part of the Nationalist movement that came out of Quebec.
A lot of people associate the Nationalist movement with the hockey team.
The Canadiens’ success is seen as being a first step towards the Quebec nationalist dream. The book talks about the tensions in our country between English and French, and how putting on a particular hockey sweater could define you and where you were going with your life.
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
by
Ken DrydenSynopsis:
Widely acknowledged as the best hockey book ever written and lauded by "Sports Illustrated" as one of the Top 10 Sports Books of All Time,
"The Game" is a reflective and thought-provoking look at a life in hockey.
Intelligent and insightful, former Montreal Canadiens goalie and former President of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ken Dryden captures the essence of the sport and what it means to all hockey fans.
He gives us vivid and affectionate portraits of the characters -- Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, Serge Savard, and coach Scotty Bowman among them -- that made the Canadiens of the 1970s one of the greatest hockey teams in history. But beyond that, Dryden reflects on life on the road, in the spotlight, and on the ice, offering up a rare inside look at the game of hockey and an incredible personal memoir.
This commemorative edition marks the 20th anniversary of "The Game's" original publication. It includes black and white photography from the Hockey Hall of Fame and a new chapter from the author.
Take a journey to the heart and soul of the game with this timeless hockey classic.
Review:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
Next is The Game, widely heralded as the best book about hockey. It was first published in 1983 and was named one of the 10 best athletics books of all time by Sports Illustrated. Please introduce us to the book and its author.
The Game may be the best sports book ever written by a participant. It’s by Ken Dryden, who was perhaps the best goalie of his era. He played for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, at the time when they might have been the best hockey team ever. He tells his story in a journal format, tracing not only what was happening on the team but what was happening in the world around him – the sociopolitical atmosphere in the province of Quebec when nationalism was rearing its head.
Ken Dryden is a graduate of Cornell, an educated and erudite observer. But he was also a great athlete. With these books, the person is either a great writer but not really a participant of any value, or else they’re an athletic star but they haven’t got the means to tell the story in a way that resonates. Dryden is an excellent writer and he was an excellent athlete so he was able to write an unsurpassed insider account of the game and point out its place in our culture. I don’t think you can find a better book by a participant in any other sport.
The Game focuses on the Montreal team, known simply as Les Canadiens. This is the only case I know of a team going simply by the name of their nationality. Dryden went on to become a Canadian MP and once remarked of his fellow Canadians, “When hockey isn’t going well, we Canadians don’t seem to be doing as well, either.” During the 2010 Olympics, more than 80% of the country watched the men’s finals. How central is hockey to the Canadian psyche?
The statistic you just gave speaks to how indelibly hockey is ingrained into the Canadian culture.
Baseball is very popular in the United States but there are other sports Americans love.
With the exception of maybe soccer in Argentina and rugby in New Zealand, no other country so identifies with a single sport as Canada does with ice hockey.
It speaks to our national character. It’s what we send forward into the world."
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
by Bruce Dowbiggin (no photo)Synopsis:
Hockey is more than a game. It's more than a way of life. In Canada, it's a portrait of who we are. It's a window into our very soul.
In The Meaning of Puck, bestselling author Bruce Dowbiggin takes a peek into that window and - frankly - it's not always such a pretty picture. Viewed through the prism of hockey, Canada is, Dowbiggin argues, a land of compelling and surprising - even ugly and embarrassing - contradictions.
In a series of essays that is a road trip across the nation's cultural landscape, he shows how the national passion of hockey reflects - or deflects - the issues of globalization, regionalism, anti-Americanism, militarism, violence, racism and greed.
Why are Canadians, for instance, such strenuous advocates of pacifism and non-militarism around the world while simultaneously embracing - and promoting - the world's most vicious and violent brand of hockey? It's not the Americans who popularize violence in hockey. It's us.
Dowbiggin comes to terms with the absurd hero worship of The Great One. Or why Canadians so smugly spoof American ignorance while making a cultural icon of Don Cherry. Is it because in a nation without rules or standards he still stands for something, however distasteful?
The Meaning of Puck is a funny, acidic, irreverent, argumentative and often infuriating but always thought-provoking look into the fabric of a nation straining to keep old traditions alive and incorporate new national myths.
Review by Author:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
"In your book The Meaning of Puck you use hockey as a window into the Canadian soul. What do you show us?
I tried to unlock the mystery of why Canada and hockey are so inextricably linked. I took the reader back to the 19th century to understand why we became so enamoured of this game and why we’ve adopted it as our own.
I looked back at moments in hockey history, like the 1972 eight-game summit showdown between Canada and the USSR. It was Canada’s first chance to beat the Soviets. They beat us in the Olympics, where you were only allowed to use amateurs.
In the summit series we used our best players. The entire country was absolutely wrapped up in these eight games against the Soviets. It was a cultural political sport.
I try to identify in the book why it is we have that link to hockey, and in particular why a country that is so well known for being pacifist is so attached to what might be the most violent team sport in the world – the only sport that I know of which allows you to fight and still stay in the game.
What are the answers you came up with?
It has to do with our pacifist character. Human nature isn’t all docile. There are primal urges.
Hockey is a chance for us to express or experience vicariously the very opposite of pacifism within a sport. And for a country that had two very strong forming influences, the English and the French, hockey is a way to basically work out that relationship, work out the tensions between the two sides without it erupting into civil war or something worse.
Often the conflict in hockey represents and is a way of working out other tensions in our country. If conflict is played out in hockey, then we don’t necessarily have to play it out in other parts of our lives."
More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruc...
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
by
Synopsis:
“One of this continent’s master craftsmen of sporting prose” (Sports Illustrated) and three-time National Magazine Award-winner Gare Joyce goes undercover to learn the secrets of NHL scouts.
Veteran sports writer Gare Joyce realizes a long-held secret ambition as he spends a full season embedded as a hockey scout. Joyce’s year on the hockey beat is a steep learning curve for him; NHL scouts spend each season gathering information on players fighting it out to break into the world of professional hockey. They watch hundreds of games, speak to scores of players, parents, team-mates and other scouts, amassing profiles on all the top contenders. It’s a form of risk assessment–is this young hopeful deserving of a multi-million dollar contract?–and it can be a tough and thankless task. Scouts are ground into the game, picking up nuances of play that even the most committed fan would miss, but they are looking at more than just how well a kid can play. And come the final draft, only a tiny percentage of their full year’s work might matter.
Examining the amount of information gathered on the under-eighteen hopefuls, the scrutiny to which they are subjected, and the differences between the rigour of American and Canadian junior teams, Joyce opens a window on the life and methods of an NHL scout and penetrates the mysterious world of scouting as no one has before.
Review:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
"Future Greats and Heartbreaks is based on National Magazine Award-winning sportswriter Gare Joyce’s year as a hockey scout. Please tell us about it.
The reason I like this book is that it reminds me of the kind of books I like writing and reading. Gare was able to become a scout, part of the personnel department for an NHL team the Columbus Blue Jackets – a really terrible team. He was able to participate in their scouting and their drafting over the course of the year. In the book he shows people, in a first-hand way, how scouting works and how pro sports work. Gare got to be a participant in this story in a way that few of us authors ever get to be.
It makes for a really interesting and informative read for a hockey fan. Even if you’re not a fan of hockey, if you’re just a sports fan, there’s a lot that you can take from it about how players are evaluated that applies to baseball, football, basketball – to any team sport. It has become so scientific over the last decade and a half. Players are carefully assessed and tested. Hockey, like the other sports, has become a multibillion-dollar enterprise. So much money is riding on each one of these decisions.
What does Future Greats and Heartbreaks tell us about what teams go through to get the best player and what players go through to get picked?
The best lesson is that everyone tries to be scientific and everyone tries to be thorough, but the most important thing is the most unknowable. You need to understand the heart of the player, understand how the player could work within the team. Some general managers draft players and select players and trade for players who don’t necessarily fit with their team culture. I don’t think fans understand how complicated it is to find the right guy, the person who has leadership ability, the player who can fit into a culture the team is trying to build. I don’t think the fans understand, but this book helps you to.
Joyce’s year as a scout seems to have changed his take on the game. How has your ringside view affected your view of hockey?
I’ve known players, and I’ve known people who work in management. When you get close to the sport you get a glimpse of its particular internal culture, which is not unlike the culture of the military or the police. It’s a culture that basically exists for itself, and it runs hockey in its own way, defying outside pressure. Sports in general, and hockey in particular, here in Canada almost have a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to how they operate. It’s really quite fascinating to see the hold that professional sport has on everyone, from the average fan right up to the prime minister.
What is unique about hockey’s culture?
What’s interesting about hockey, compared to the other team sports, is that it is intercultural. Obviously there’s the Canadian hockey culture, which dominates or at least tries to dominate.
But then we have the culture of the Americans and the Russians and the Czechs and Swedes, who love the sport and who have things to add to it.
It’s not dissimilar to what happened to soccer when the English let soccer go out into the world – the Italians and the Brazilians and the Argentineans took it over and changed it in their own way. The same thing plays out in hockey all the time.
We Canadians don’t seem to want to let go of the sport because we’re afraid that if we let somebody improve it it won’t be our sport anymore – we will have lost something. When you’re a small country of 30 million people you have certain things you hold onto, and in Canada that’s hockey.
How does hockey culture differ in different countries?
There’s a long engrained idea that the Canadians are the try-harder school of hockey. I remember a Swedish player telling me: “We want to win the Stanley Cup, but a Canadian guy will kill you to win the Stanley Cup.”
The ethos in Canada has always been about desire, effort.
We think if we just try a little bit harder we’ll be the champions. The Americans and the Europeans are trying to find better strategies, better ways to play the game. I think they’re more technical and scientific than Canadians are about the sport."
More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruc...
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
by
Roy MacGregorSynopsis:
What could be more Canadian than a father and son strapping on their skates and hitting a frozen creek for a game of hockey?
Roy MacGregor explores this familiar scene in The Home Team, a book that looks not only at the game of hockey, but also at the important relationship hockey players have with their fathers.
Featuring the personal tales of some of the sport's greatest heroes -- including Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe, Mark Messier, and Guy Lafleur -- this specially priced book makes an excellent gift for the fathers and sons in your family.
Review:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
"Let’s talk about the family side of hockey culture. The Home Team: Fathers, Sons and Hockey is by your colleague at Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Roy MacGregor. Tell us about this best-selling but out-of-print title.
Roy wanted to look at the bond between fathers and sons in hockey and the family roots of hockey culture.
He had observed that often hockey players in moments of triumph referred to their fathers.
Many of them are fulfilling a dream for their fathers as much as a dream for themselves. The book succeeds in showing where these boys and their drive to succeed come from.
MacGregor focuses on some of the legendary players to tell the story of how hockey is passed on from father and son.
He talks about Brett Hull and his father Bobby Hull, both of whom are Hall of Fame players, great players. He talks about Wayne Gretzky and his father Walter, who never was an NHL player. One chapter takes place during one of the labour lockouts, when a bunch of NHL stars barnstormed around Europe and took their fathers with them.
It shows the range of fathers who were travelling with their sons on this tour – from the father of guys like Wayne Gretzky, who might be the best player who ever played, right down to the dads of journeymen like Marty McSorley, who were just average players.
Is there something unique about hockey that makes family involvement more essential than in, say, soccer? Governor Sarah Palin liked to declare herself a hockey mom while campaigning to become vice president, as though to be a hockey mom indicated a particularly intense dedication to family.
Football and baseball in America and even in Canada are sports that kids can play through the school system. Typically the people that you are coached by and the culture you’re surrounded by is an educational one. It produces a certain type of mindset. Hockey has always been placed in the community.
The time when you practise and play games is the time when you’re away from school, so the obligation falls more on moms who have kids in hockey than it does in other sports.
In the other sports the schools will transport the kids to games and organise the practices on school grounds. With hockey it’s all on the parents to drive kids at five in the morning to a hockey practice far from home, or to go for a weekend tournament in a van.
Hockey requires more commitment from parents than other sports do. It’s part of the culture and mythology of the game that I talk about in my books."
More:
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruc...
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
Young Adult Fiction - Classic Hockey Trilogy
by
Scott YoungSynopsis:
High school hockey player Pete Gordon finds himself missing his old teammates and the chance for a championship when he has to go to a new high school and join a newly formed team.
Review:
Interview and Review with Bruce Dowbiggin (sports columnist and author) on FiveBooks:
"Lastly, let’s talk about a classic of Canadian adolescence, Scrubs on Skates, by award-winning sportswriter Scott Young. It was originally written in the fifties, but seems to have never gone out of print. Please tell us about this enduringly popular book and it’s play-by-play plot.
It’s a 1952 book about a young player who’s a potential hockey star. Then his family moves and he has to go to another school, where the team isn’t as good. He considers himself a big deal with the lesser team. It’s all about how he learns to redirect his focus from himself to the team. In the end, of course, he and his new team beat his old team in the big championship game. It’s a very simple kind of book, but hockey is in some ways a very simple game.
Scott Young was, I think, the best hockey writer during the first 70 years of the 20th century. He was a great beat reporter, following the Toronto Maple Leafs, but he also wrote these kids books. And, of course, he famously was the father of Neil Young, the rock musician. Scrubs on Skates was a seminal book for so many kids. If you were a young boy who wanted to play hockey this is a book that you would read.
How much has hockey changed since when this book was written? Some say the violence, which was once brotherly, is now brutal. Former NHL broadcasting director Stu Hackel said 2012 saw “the most vicious and, perhaps, disgraceful first round of the Stanley Cup play-offs”. Was violence always such an integral part of the game?
In the days when Scrubs on Skates was written, every hockey player had to defend himself. We used to have bench-clearing brawls, people going up into the stands, and long drawn-out fights on the ice. Then there were no Europeans – I think there might have been one or two Americans in the NHL, not many. Hockey was still an internal Canadian drama. The influx of Europeans and Americans into the sport changed it.
Now the violence is very strategic, very sudden, very dramatic and because the speed of the game is so much greater, the impact and the injury is also much greater. We have a different kind of violence today. I don’t think this is the most violent first round of the NHL play-offs by any means. I’m 58 years old, I’ve seen plenty. It has changed a lot, but what has changed the most is our understanding of the consequences of concussion. The result of that is that hockey has come under more and more scrutiny, because it still has a 19th century attitude towards violence.
What are the boundaries for violence in hockey? A hit to the head is OK? Slamming an opponent into the glass, just fine? I know it’s inexact, but please help us understand the rules and how they’ve evolved.
A lot of people these days would like to codify it because they feel like the league doesn’t define it very well. It changes from day to day. The biggest problem we have right now is targeting the head with a hit. The league has decided, like the NFL, that they have to protect the head because the hits are taking too much of a toll. That’s the biggest focus – trying to get certain players out of the game who hit the head as a tactic. It used to be that when you banged a guy with your shoulder we called it a good hockey hit. That has changed.
What fuels the violence? Steroids? Surging hormones? Commercial greed? Is it tactically necessary?
Back when Scrubs on Skates was written, most of it was anger-induced. It was the product of coaches pushing guys harder and making anger a weapon in the sport. It’s very different now. I think that in 95% of the cases fighting is just a poor coaching technique. A lot of the time a coach sends out his fighter into play to change the mood of the game, to try to get his team inspired. There’s no animus behind the fights. By and large, it’s done by coldblooded gunslinger types put in play by coaches trying to change the tenor of the game.
Now that career-ending concussions and the long-term consequences of frequent brain injuries are in the news, how do you expect the sport to change, if at all? Would reducing violence emasculate the game?
The league has to get serious about reducing violence. The league has to be consistent about what it wants to sell to the public. Until that happens, I don’t think anything is going to change. It takes a lot of courage to play hockey in the first place. It’s a fast game. The puck goes whizzing by your head. There are sharp blades. It’s not a game that you take on lightly. It’s not softball on a Sunday afternoon. Even a casual hockey game has a lot of risk in it, and at the professional level the risk factor is enormous. It’s not a game that you can take the danger out of, even by eliminating the fighting."
More: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/bruc...
Source: FiveBooks
Mod
Release date: November 12, 2019
Miracle in Lake Placid: The Greatest Hockey Story Ever Told
by Chris Peters (no photo)Synopsis:
Forty years after the "Miracle on Ice" captivated the world, this book deeply examines the impact that singular event had on the people who played and coached in it, America as a whole, and how that game changed the trajectory of American hockey. Through interviews with players, coaches, executives, broadcasters, and journalists, this book reexamines the game against the Soviets, what made it the upset it was, why it still resonates today, and what it did to the lives of the players. Author Chris Peters provides one of the deepest statistical analyses of the Miracle on Ice, using hockey analytics to measure just how overmatched USA was even though it ended up victorious.
From Mike Eruzione to Jim Craig, Mark Johnson, Buzz Schneider, Jack O’Callahan, Mike Ramsey, Ken Morrow, and many others, Peters covers all the key players and in doing so offers a deeper understanding of the emotions and the strategy, the hows and whys of the actual game, and the impact that moment had on their lives both in the immediate aftermath and today. Peters doesn’t miss a beat in considering the ripple effect the event helped create by indirectly raising what is known as the greatest generation of American players such as Chris Chelios, Mike Modano, Brian Leetch, and others—who were all young players watching this team at home—and how the movie “Miracle” helped reinvigorate the story and inspire a new generation of players and fans.
To explore the impact on American morale in the immediate aftermath of the Miracle, Peters dives deep into the archives. In doing so he offers a look at this moment unlike it’s ever been done before and helps answer the question as to why it continues to capture our imaginations.
Mod
Mod
Release date: May 13, 2020
Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey
by Thomas J. Whalen (no photo)Synopsis:
While the United States seethed from racial violence, war, and mass shootings, the 1969-70 “Big, Bad Bruins,” led by the legendary Bobby Orr, brushed off their perennial losing ways to defeat the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Finals for their first championship in 29 years.
In Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey, Thomas J. Whalen recounts all the memorable moments from that championship season. Behind the no-nonsense yet inspired leadership of head coach Harry Sinden, the once laughingstock Bruins became the talk of the sporting world. Nicknamed the “Big, Bad Bruins” for their propensity to out-brawl and intimidate their opponents, the team rallied around the otherworldly play of Bobby Orr and his hard-hitting teammates to take the NHL by surprise in a season to remember.
Kooks and Degenerates on Ice brings to life all the colorful personalities and iconic players from this Stanley Cup-raising team. In addition, the season is placed into its historical context as the United States struggled with issues of war, race, politics, and class, making this a must-read for sports enthusiasts, hockey fans, and those interested in twentieth-century American history.
Mod
message 31:
by
Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
(last edited Nov 22, 2022 07:20AM)
(new)
Mod
Release date: June 6, 2023
Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team That Fought the Soviets for the Soul of Its People—And Olympic Gold
by Ethan Scheiner (no photo)Synopsis:
During the height of the Cold War, a group of small-town young men would lead their underdog hockey team from the little country of Czechoslovakia against the Soviet Union, the juggernaut in their sport. As they battled on the ice, the young players would keep their people’s quest for freedom alive, and forge a way to fight back against the authoritarian forces that sought to crush them.
From the sudden invasion of Czechslovakia by an armada of tanks and 500,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers, to a hockey victory over the Soviets that inspired half a million furious citizens to take to the streets in an attempt to destroy all representations that they could find of their occupiers, Freedom to Win ranges from iconic moments in history to courageous individual stories. We will witness the fearless escape by three brothers who made up the core of the national team, thrilling world championship games and gold medal matches. We will watch as a one brave player takes a stand and leads ten thousand people in a tear-filled rendition of the Czechoslovak national anthem amid chants of “freedom!” while a revolution raged in the streets of Prague.
At the heart of Freedom to Win is the story of the Holíks, a Czechoslovak family whose resistance to the Communists embodied the deepest desires of the people of their country. Faced with life under the cruel and arbitrary regime that had stolen their family butcher shop, the Holík boys became national hockey icons and inspirations to their people. Filled with heart-pounding moments on the ice and unforgettable slices of history, Freedom to Win is the ultimate tale of why sports truly matter.
Mod
Mod
Release date: November 1, 2023
The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies, the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76
by Ed Gruver (no photo)Synopsis:
In late 1975 and early 1976, at the height of the Cold War, two of the Soviet Union’s long-dominant national hockey teams traveled to North America to play an eight-game series against the best teams in the National Hockey League. The culmination of the “Super Series” was HC CSKA Moscow’s face-off against the reigning champion Flyers in Philadelphia on January 11, 1976. Known as the “Red Army Club,” HC CSKA hadn’t lost a game in the series. Known as the “Broad Street Bullies,” the Flyers were determined to bring the Red Army team’s winning streak to an end with their trademark aggressive style of play.
Based largely on interviews, Ed Gruver’s book tells the story of this epic game and series as it lays out the stakes involved: nothing less than the credibility of the NHL. If the Red Army team had completed its series sweep by defeating the two-time Stanley Cup champion Flyers, the NHL would no longer have been able to claim primacy of place in professional-level hockey. Gruver also describes how the game and series affected the styles of both Russian and NHL teams. The Soviets adopted a more physical brand of hockey, while the NHL increasingly focused on passing and speed.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies, the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76 (other topics)Freedom to Win: A Cold War Story of the Courageous Hockey Team That Fought the Soviets for the Soul of Its People―And Olympic Gold (other topics)
Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey (other topics)
Miracle in Lake Placid: The Greatest Hockey Story Ever Told (other topics)
Scrubs on Skates (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Ed Gruver (other topics)Ethan Scheiner (other topics)
Thomas J. Whalen (other topics)
Chris Peters (other topics)
Scott Young (other topics)
More...
In fact, this is the thread to discuss books (non fiction and historical fiction) which deal with any element of hockey as a sport.