Now we know how prolific hockey authors spent the pandemic.
A record number of books crossed our desk (apologies if we missed a few), many inspired by half century salutes to Team Canada ’72 and the World Hockey Association, others by compelling personal stories.
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Whatever your reading pleasure, put one or more of these in the Christmas stocking of your favourite hockey fan:
Evolve Or Die: Hard-Won Lessons From A Hockey Life
John Shannon
Simon and Shuster, 250 pages, $34.99
Long-time Hockey Night In Canada producer and league broadcasting exec Shannon has helped many in our field enhance their stories and features, so it’s high time for his own memoir. From the first powder blue HNIC jacket he wore as a show gopher, to calling control room shots for Dave Hodge, Dick Irvin, Bob Cole, Harry Neale and giving his own two cents as a TV panelist, Shannon balances nostalgia with the need for hockey to keep pushing the envelope into new broadcast and audience opportunities.
Odd Man In
Stephen Wyno
Triumph, 248 pages, $38.00
David Ayres wasn’t the first goalie to come out of the crowd to an NHL net, but certainly became the patron saint of EBUGs. That led Whyno, one of the best hockey reporters in the business, to explore more tales of ‘the wildest one-day job in sports’, documenting the weird circumstances that see an unlikely stopper get a few minutes of fame.
The Odd Fellow’s Heart
Morey Holzman
HRA Books, 254 pages, $35.00
In the late 19th century, hockey didn’t suffer for lack of tactics, it had little or no officiating. Games were often delayed until a volunteer ref stepped up, sometimes an extra player in attendance. James Stewart, the hard-working orphaned son of Irish immigrants in Montreal and member of the city’s first Stanley Cup champions in 1893, laid the blueprint for zebras and in doing that, helped expand the sport.
Hockey Moms: The Heart Of The Game
Theresa Bailey and Terry Marcotte
Collins, 320 pages, $33.99
Kelly McDavid, Ema Matthews and Chantal Oster (Tkachuk) get their moment in the ‘son’, though these pages make it known not every hockey-loving matron gives birth to a star. Bailey helped set up CanadianHockeyMoms.ca for morale support and when CTV reporter Marcotte profiled her efforts, this book resulted. When things are going good, such as their first NHL goal, they call dad,” Marcotte observed. “When they get cut from the team, they call mom.”
All Roads Home
Bryan Trottier with Stephen Brunt
McClelland and Stewart, 304 pages, $35.00
Most seven-time Cup winners have a well-documented upbringing. Trottier’s was more a mystery until the native of Val Marie, Sask., reflects on his Cree-Chippewa-Metis father and the community of friends who shaped his career.
Call Me Indian
Fred Sasakamoose
Penguin, 288 pages, $32.00
Sasakamoose was finally getting his due as the NHL’s first treaty indigenous player when he passed in 2020 at age 85. The residential schools’ tragedy plays out in real time for Fred and his family, he and his brother forcibly removed from their traditional way of life, facing racism and the threat of sexual abuse before hockey provided him an all-too-brief 11-game break with Chicago.
Bernie Nicholls: From Flood Lights to Bright Lights
With Kevin Allen and Ross McKeon
Triumph, 252 pages, $40.00
Nicholls never won a Stanley Cup, but did just about everything else, notching 1,200 points, scoring 70 goals in a season and playing for two marquee franchises in Los Angeles and New York. Those memories, hanging with Wayne Gretzky (who wrote the foreword) when he was the toast of the coast were quite the journey from small-town Ontario for Nicholls, though the good times were tempered by personal loss.
Matthew Barnaby, Unfiltered
With Kevin Shea
Triumph, 238 pages, $40.00
In today’s tamer times around pro hockey there’s an odd charm to an ejected Barnaby and the player he’d high-sticked fighting on the floor of an AHL arena medical room with the doctor and security guards trying to break it up. Barnaby doesn’t regret his rough-hewn path — only one other NHLer drafted in his fourth round out-did his 834 games — even if he strayed close to the edge.
1972, The Series That Changed Hockey Forever
Scott Morrison
Simon and Shuster, 332 pages $34.99
We begin a series on the Summit series with this all-encompassing tome that takes you back to ’72, but doesn’t leave you there. Fifty years on, the memories are still sharp; so is new perspective of what it all meant, from many Canadian and Russian angles. Tinged with some sadness as many of the participants have just passed on.
When Canada Shut Down
Sean Mitton, Paul Patskou and Alexander Braverman
Lulu Press, 260 pages, $25.00
Top hockey researcher/archivists on both sides of the Atlantic interviewed many hitherto unknown personalities behind the scenes of ’72, including Canadian fans who made the trip to Moscow, Russian bench and support staff and examine the series’ impact on today’s NHL. A few ‘frenemies’ come to light, a few myths are dispelled as well.
The Series
Ken Dryden
McClelland and Stewart, 200 pages, $22.99
Dryden’s early struggles in Games 1 and 4 could’ve vilified him in Canadian international hockey history. But he and his mates morphed from overconfident superstars divided by NHL club cliques into an unwavering force on Moscow ice. “In those kinds of difficult moments, the most of what you are comes out in you,” Dryden wrote. “Often times it’s things you don’t even know about yourself, let alone other people. When we get put in that corner and the corner gets deeper and there are fewer ways out, what now? We all know in our minds there are lines we cross and lines we don’t. But circumstances have a way of pushing us where lines get rewritten.”
The Greatest Comeback
John U. Bacon
HarperCollins, 424 pages, $27.95
A best-selling American writer’s take on Canada’s greatest hockey moment, also includes retrospectives by players as well as interviews with Gretzky and others, a deeper dive into how the series changed decades of tactics in just four weeks.
Teammates On Ice: The First 50 years of NHL Superstars, All-Stars and Role Players.
Ray Mulley
Tellwell, 549 pages, $32.50
Met Mr. Mulley at a hockey banquet where he had the great Bob Baun at his table, riveted to reading this meticulously researched project, a gallery of players comprising the NHL’s first half century. Mulley, 78, not only provides profile and stats right back to the league’s first year in 1917, but those from the long-forgotten Hamilton Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Montreal Maroons and the original Ottawa Senators.
Total Bruins, 1929-39
Jeff Miclash
Self-published. 506 pages, $45.00
Many chowderheads who claim expertise in everything Bruins have little knowledge of Hub hockey before Bobby Orr’s Cup-winning goal in 1970. Miclash harkens to a glorious decade that opened and closed with Cups and how icons such as Art Ross, Eddie Shore and Tiny Thompson influenced the B’s and the NHL. Hundreds of photos and fascinating sidebars.
Road To Redemption
Chris Therien with Wayne Fish
Triumph, 325 pages, $40.00
In this era of mega-contracts and high-performance training, it seems unfathomable an NHLer would risk throwing a career away on booze. Therien not only hit the hard stuff before and after games, he’d go to his car between periods to down a water bottle full of vodka or fall down drunk on ice and hope people thought it was a skate issue. While he somehow lasted more than 800 games, drinking also threatened his second career in the media. Overcoming his addiction – he quit cold turkey 11 years ago — is framed around the death of a beloved sister and concern for his wife and kids. A cautionary tale, not just for hockey players.
Marian Hossa: My Journey From Trencin to the Hall Of Fame
Marian Hossa with Scott Powers
Triumph. 317 pages, $40.00
Hossa had an eventful 1,500-game career, starkly different chapters in different cities, a Slovakian who played junior in Canada, an Ottawa Senator unable to go far in playoffs, two losing trips to the Cup final with separate teams, then third time lucky with three titles in Chicago before a skin disease forced retirement. Though he was a dark horse Hall of Fame pick, reading other’s comments about his life and his intent to give back to his hometown further shapes one of the game’s under-appreciated stars.
Engraved In History: The Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles
Eric Zweig
Rat Portage Press, 310 pages, $19.99
The first of two entries from Zweig, who already holds exalted status as co-producer of the league’s sadly discontinued Official Guide and Record Book. He seamlessly transports readers back to 1907 Northern Ontario and the smallest town (pop. 6,000) ever to produce a Cup champ. The Thistles were full of crowd pleasers, not unlike the vintage Habs and Leafs and just as secondary market teams today, holding those players proved difficult.
Hockey Hall Of Fame True Stories
Eric Zweig
Firefly, 204 pages, $24.95
I started reading this one from the back for some reason, and was quickly engrossed by the tale of ‘Ching’ Johnson of the Rangers working with 1930s heart throb Clark Gable on a big budget hockey movie that fizzled when it turned out the ‘King of Hollywood’ couldn’t skate. Many more off-beat stories of Hall stars are included, ideal for the Christmas coffee table.
Victory on Ice: The Chicago Blackhawks’ First Stanley Cups
Paul R. Greenland
North Hill Books, 262 pages, $30.17
Todd Denault and our friends at the Society for International Hockey Research provide a big assist again with their critic’s choice entries, labours of love, most without any publicity. Here, Greenland details the sacrifices and highly improbable circumstances that brought Lord Stanley to Chicago in 1934 and ’38. They were titles that evoked and jubilation during the gloom of the Great Depression, with players and their families not far removed from the harsh economic times – and ruthless underworld gamblers.
Tricks of the Trade: Every Trade Made In New York Rangers’ History
Sean McCaffrey
Independently Published, 387 pages (per volume), $34.01 (per volume)
Surely the most ambitious project of the season is this four-volume opus. Yes, it’s every deal by the Blueshirts, by all 12 Ranger general managers chronologically covered and graded, nearly 700 swaps involving 3,000 players. The GMs and their eras are also dissected, from expansion to the salary cap, plus the human interest of players affected by world war, substance abuse, arrests, plane crashes, concussions, diseases, mental health, defections and more.
Ed Snider: The Last Sports Mogul
Alan Bass
Triumph, 256 pages, $38.00
In 2016, the NHL lost one of its most influential owners, who began by mortgaging nearly everything to his name to get the long-shot 1967 expansion Philadelphia Flyers and go on to create the billion-dollar Comcast-Spectacor empire. This first biography of Snider contrasts his success in business with his sometimes-flawed personal side.
Behind the Lens: The World Hockey Association 50 Years Later
Steve Babineau with Brian Codagnone
ECW Press, 240 pages $39.55
In this anniversary of the ‘Rebel League’ many WHA enthusiasts were hoping for such a memento, many never-before-seen photos of its quirky teams and many characters. Bostonian Babineau worked the night the New England Whalers launched against the Philadelphia Blazers, when cameras were still manually focused and fought poor lighting in many WHA barns. Babineau clicked a 17-year-old Gretzky, the Golden Jet, the Howes and many long-haired and mustachioed journeymen in full flight.
A Slap Shot in Time: The Wild but True History of the Minnesota Fighting Saints
Dan Whenesota
Independently published, 172 pages, $26.98
The Saints were a charter franchise in a league of little stability. Setting up in St. Paul as opposed to Minneapolis, they heavily invested in star power such as Dave Keon, Mike Walton and John McKenzie, with the legendary Harry Neale behind the bench.
lhornby@postmedia.com