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Showing 41 - 60 of 319 items
By Mike Brophy. 2011
Every player who ever scored in the NHL has a different story about his first goal. For some, like Wayne…
Gretzky, Gordie Howe, or Phil Esposito, their first goal was just one of many they would score in their long and illustrious careers. For others, their first goal was also their last. Sports journalist Mike Brophy has interviewed fifty players about their first NHL goal, and the result is a wide-ranging wealth of personal stories that include high-profile former NHLers and many of the game's best players from today. Some players, such as Chicago Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, scored in their first NHL game. Others were not so lucky. Jim Vesey, for example, scored his only NHL goal into an empty net. With lots of direct quotes from the players themselves and Brophy supplying the tantalizing background information and career highlights, this book is a treat for hockey fans young and old.From the Trade Paperback edition.By James Mancuso. 2006
Hockey in the Capital District chronicles professional hockey in the capital region of New York State: Albany, Schenectady, and Troy.…
A total of six professional teams have taken the ice in four different leagues, beginning in the 1952-1953 season with the Troy Uncle Sam's Trojans. The tradition continued with the Schenectady Chiefs (1981-1982), the Troy Slapshots (1986-1987), the Albany Choppers (1990-1991), the Troy-based Capital District Islanders (1990-1993), and the Albany River Rats (1993-present). The River Rats brought the area its fi rst championship by capturing the AHL's Calder Cup. Through historic images, this volume presents the rich hockey heritage of the Capital District.By Ray Robertson. 2014
Peter Bayle—heavy drinker, philosopher, scholar, anemic lover—is in Kansas, writing a feature on middle America's newfound love for hockey. There…
he meets a morphine-injecting reverend, a reviled reporter, and a drug salesman; obsessed by his self-destructive new friends, Bayle abandons the project and returns home to confront a future and a girlfriend he may no longer want.By Andrew Podnieks. 2011
Even before Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin began their NHL careers in 2005, the two players were rivals. They first…
met at the World U20 (Junior) Championship, playing for the gold medal, and ever since they have been opponents in the NHL and international arenas. No two star players could be so different. Crosby is the consummate captain and team player, the responsible face of the NHL. Ovechkin is the loose cannon on ice and off, capable of a great play or a cocky comment. Sid vs. Ovi traces this intense rivalry game by game, year by year, from 2005 to 2011 and beyond. Their biographies are given consideration alongside their in-game performance and career development to present a clear picture of their lives, their careers, their league, and their countries. Hockey fans can well be divided into those who prefer one or the other of this pair of scintillating talents. But one thing is certain - the presence of one inspires the other to greater heights.From the Trade Paperback edition.By Nicolas Moreau, Howard Scott, Marie-Pier Rivest, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe. 2015
One of the most famous and certainly most successful professional hockey teams of all time, the Montreal Canadiens are practically…
a national institution in Quebec society. More than any other team, the Habs play an important role in the identity, economy, and culture of their home town and province.The essays in The Montreal Canadiens: Rethinking a Legend offer a panoramic view of this influence. What were the connections between the Maurice Richard Riot of 1955 and Quebec's Quiet Revolution? Can we say that loyalty to the team constitutes a religion for its fans? How is corporatization affecting how Quebecers connect with their beloved team? Featuring a wide range of writing on Le Grand Club and its social significance, the book offers a fresh and fascinating perspective on one of Canada's greatest sports teams.By Dan Robson. 2015
A tribute to the larger than life story of a hockey icon and hero. The hockey world mourned when Pat…
Quinn died in November 2014. Tough guys sobbed. Networks carried montages of Quinn's rugged hits, his steely-eyed glare, and his famous victories. Quinn made a few enemies over the years, but there was no one who didn't respect the tough working-class kid who had fought his way to the very top of the hockey world. He had butted heads with superstars, with management, and with the league itself. And he had also succeeded at every level, finishing his journeyman's career as the captain of an NHL team, then quickly emerged as one of the best coaches in the league. He gathered executive titles like hockey cards, and done things his own way, picking up a law degree along the way. He was brash, dour, and abrasive--and people loved him for his alloy of pugnacity and flair, his three-piece suits and cigars, his Churchillian heft and his scowl. In the end, the player who would never even have dreamed of being inducted into the Hall of Fame was the chair of the Hall's selection committee. That is Quinn's story: an underdog who succeeded so completely that his legacy has become the standard by which others are judged. Told by bestselling author Dan Robson, and supported by the Quinn family and network of friends, Quinn is the definitive account of one of the game's biggest personalities and most storied lives.From the Hardcover edition.By Andrew Podnieks. 2013
Where Countries Come to Play chronicles each Olympic tournament, from the 1920 Antwerp games to Vancouver in 2010. Illustrated with…
photographs from the IIHF archives, the book features rare pictures of games and players, as well as memorabilia and artifacts. Each event is retold through a detailed narrative that will offer fans a complete history of Olympic hockey, including amazing stories from both on and off the ice, organizational challenges, bitter battles, player's tales, and spectacular hockey action. The book also contains a prelude to 2014 Sochi and a detailed appendix of Olympic hockey stats. As well, Where Countries Come to Play celebrates the IIHF's Triple Gold Club, whose members have each won an Olympic Gold Medal, a Stanley Cup, and a World Championship. For the first time in book form, the elite club's twenty-five members are profiled and the story of their accomplishments told. The book will be publsihed in advance of the Sochi Winter Games and is the must-have hockey book for all fans of the game and for anyone that has ever cheered for their nation as they skated out onto the ice.By Matthew Dibiase. 2015
Bench Bosses celebrates the greatest NHL Coaches in the history of the game. Bench Bosses is filled with compelling biographical…
narrative, innovative analysis, historical allusion, hockey folklore, humour, heartbreak, and tragedy. By introducing a creative new method for evaluating coaching success, professional historian and hockey columnist Matthew DiBiase settles many a debate. His hard-hitting prose and cogent analysis covers key aspects of coaching and definitively identifies the greatest offensive and defensive coaches, expounds on the best penalty-killing or power-play coaches and delves into statistics to determine the nastiest squads on the ice. His unique assessment method determines his selection of the top fifty head coaches of all time. DiBiase's in-depth hockey research delivers a powerful, gripping and informative look at the game's best of the best. This seminal book tells the story behind the story of coaching success. It removes subjectivity and bias and provides a comprehensive overview of each coach's major career achievements and the contributions each has made to the game. In the writing of this book, the author personally interviewed many of the game's best known coaches and their players to get the most accurate and complete perspective of the sport and its coaching elite. Readers will enjoy hearing from such names as Scotty Bowman, Al Arbour, Jean Beliveau, Dick Irving Jr., and more.From the Hardcover edition.By Anthony Jenkins, Julie Bertuzzi. 2015
Julie Bertuzzi, the wife of NHL player Todd Bertuzzi and Hockey Mom extraordinaire, presents us with twenty hilarious portraits of…
the Hockey Moms we know and love. The perfect gift book for all seasons. Straight-shooting, observant, and uproarious, Julie Bertuzzi's Hockey Moms is an irreverent look at the many kinds of moms you are sure to find in the ice rinks, on the road, and in the hotel bars at tournaments across this hockey-loving continent. While always applauding the dedication of moms who support their players -- at early morning practices and on long drives to and from tournaments, in the triumph of a big win and the heartache of a big loss -- Bertuzzi pokes fun at herself and her fellow Hockey Moms, and brings alive the many characters she has observed during her years of experience as a Hockey Mom herself. Whether it's Big Mouth Betty shrieking from the stands, the Drama Queen stirring up trouble in the bar after a tournament game, Team Manager Mom with her clipboard and team jacket, the Yodeler, or the Leaner, readers will recognize and delight in these familiar profiles. This is a quick, funny read and a must-have book for Hockey Moms, and those who love them, everywhere.By Bob Briggs. 2008
Maine's long winters would seem the ideal place for hockey to develop, but blistering winter conditions, frigid temperatures, and windchill…
made the sport unpleasant and even dangerous. The problem was not solved until 1976, when Harold Alfond donated a large sum of money for the establishment of a suitable facility for indoor hockey. University of Maine Ice Hockey tells the story of how a small school from Maine with a student body of under 12,000 rose to be one of the top-tier hockey programs in the nation, one of the great success stories in modern collegiate sports.By Jeff Obermeyer. 2015
Before major-league professional sports came to the Northwest, Seattle had a rich minor-league sports history. In the winter, Saturday afternoons…
were for college football, but the nights were for hockey. From the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, hockey could only mean one thing--the Seattle Totems. Led by Guyle Fielder, the Totems won three Western Hockey League (WHL) championships as they skated and fought against their rivals. Grab a seat and get ready to learn about Seattle's hockey history from the Seattle Metropolitans, the first American team to win the Stanley Cup, through the Totems as they battle their WHL foes and even the Russian National Team in pursuit of hockey glory.By John Halligan. 2003
For more than three quarters of a century, the New York Rangers have been delighting hockey fans-New Yorkers and suburbanites…
alike-with a classy brand of entertainment that has no equal. The team's history includes four Stanley Cups, scores of individual stars, and countless magic moments. All of the excitement and drama of these triumphs is captured in The New York Rangers. This book salutes not only the Rangers' tradition of excellence but also the masterful talents of the photojournalists who have chronicled the team since its birth in 1926.By Don Cherry. 2016
Don Cherry has become a broadcasting legend, garnering millions of fans around the world with his "Coach's Corner" segment on…
Hockey Night in Canada. For over a decade, Cherry also hosted the TV show Grapevine, which brought viewers up close and personal with the biggest names in sports.Don was the interviewer and his son, Tim, produced the show. And no one in the sports world, from hockey players to boxers to curlers to umpires, turned down an invitation to appear on it. It was on that show that Don has some of his fondest memories from his many years in the biz, and, at last, in Don Cherry's Sports Heroes, he gives us behind-the-scenes access to some of his most fascinating and revealing interviews with the all-time greats. Don has his signature candidness and sizzling humour in these interviews and stories. In these pages you'll find epic stories about hockey greats Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe, to name a few, and since Grapevine TV was the place to be in the sports world, you can revel in some unforgettable stories on players in other fields, too. Don Cherry shares with the world tales that only a true insider could know. You won't be disappointed.By Stephen Cole. 2015
A wildly evocative chronicle of the decade that changed hockey forever. "Lady Byng died in Boston" read a sign in…
the Garden arena in 1970, a cheery dismissal of the NHL trophy awarded the game's most gentlemanly player. A new age of hockey was dawning. For 30 years, hockey was an orderly and (relatively) well-behaved sport. There was one Commissioner, six teams and five colours--red, white, black, blue and yellow. Oh, and one nationality. Until 1967, every player, coach, referee and GM in the NHL had been a Canadian. And then came NHL expansion, the founding of the WHA, and garish new uniforms. The Seventies had arrived: the era that gave us not only disco, polyester suits, lava lamps and mullets but also the movie Slap Shot and the arrest of ten NHL players for on-ice mayhem. But it also gave us hockey's greatest encounter (the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit), its most splendid team, the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens, and the most aesthetically satisfying game--the three-all tie on New Year's Eve, 1975, between the Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army. 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, exciting decade.By Reggie Leach, Bobby Clarke. 1976
"It all comes down to making the right life choices," says the NHL's legendary Reggie Leach, and this intimate biography…
lays bare the decisions that led him to become one of the best snipers in hockey history. Nicknamed the Riverton Rifle for his thrilling speed and deadly shooting skills, Leach overcame a childhood marked by poverty and racism to rise through the NHL, playing for the Stanley Cup-winning 1975 Philadelphia Flyers. Through Leach's own recollections, The Riverton Rifle traces his trajectory from humble beginnings to NHL stardom, and follows the dramatic fall caused by his drinking problem and his subsequent rebirth as a successful businessman, family man, and pillar of the Aboriginal community.By Graham Maclachlan, Kevin Shea, Jason Wilson. 2017
He stayed out of the spotlight, but Leafs fans know J.P. Bickell cast a long shadow. A self-made mining magnate…
and the man who kept the Maple Leafs in Toronto and financed Maple Leaf Gardens, J.P. Bickell lived an extraordinary and purposeful life. As one of the most important industrialists in Canadian history, Bickell left his mark on communities across the nation. He was a cornerstone of the Toronto Maple Leafs, which awards the J.P. Bickell Memorial Award to recognize outstanding service to the organization. Bickell’s story is also tied up with some of the most famous Canadians of his day, including Mitchell Hepburn, Roy Thomson, and Conn Smythe. Through his charitable foundation, he has been a key benefactor of the Hospital for Sick Children, and his legacy continues to transform Toronto. Yet, though Bickell was so important both to Toronto and the Maple Leafs, the story of his incredible life is today largely obscure. This book sets the record straight, presenting the definitive story of his rise to prominence and his lasting legacy — on the ice and off.By Richard Curtis. 1975
Athletic agent Dave Bolt, former star for the Dallas Cowboys, is a hardened sports insider, familiar with the dirty underside…
of American professional sports. He witnesses the kickbacks, the bribes and the blackmail that keep the high-powered industry spinning. In DEATH IN THE CREASE Bolt has to deal with is an explosive ice hockey scandal that threatens to expose the sport's biggest game as a sham. Former Black Hawk goalie Guy LeClede writes an expose of the corruption that "would blow hockey off the ice" if published. But before the book is seen by anyone else, LeClede suddenly drives his car off a cliff and the manuscript disappears. NHL brass have asked Bolt: to investigate the possibility of murder and unravel the intricacies of one of the priciest gambling deals of the decade.By Stephen Brunt. 2015
From celebrated author and sports journalist Stephen Brunt comes a beautifully illustrated, elegiac tribute to the Toronto Maple Leafs of…
yesteryear. In 2006, Lewis Parker, an artist and illustrator, was disposing of some of his belongings from years before in preparation of a move. He and his friend Dennis Patchett were going through boxes, and anything that was deemed not worth saving was relegated to a roaring fire. As Lewis passed him box after box, Dennis would pitch them in the blaze, one after the other. Suddenly, he caught the words on a file folder: "Leafs 1965." Inside were photo negatives and contact sheets. "I think we should keep these," said Dennis. In the fall of 1965, artist Lewis Parker received a call from Maclean's magazine for a possible gig: accompanying a reporter to Peterborough to cover the Toronto Maple Leafs's preseason training camp. Lewis would spend some time with the team, and shoot stills that would run alongside the magazine piece. Though it was a career departure, he agreed, and the result of his time spent with the Stanley Cup-winning team during the training camp before their last Cup win are within these pages: beautiful, visually arresting photography that captures the comraderie and purity of a time in hockey and Canadian history not seen since. With complete, unfettered access to the team -- many of the players from remote farms in the country, and none with agents -- and GM Punch Imlach, Lewis Parker's photos (which, once the piece was cancelled by Maclean's, were never used) reflect a wistful moment in time before the hockey league changed forever. Accompanied by acclaimed writer Stephen Brunt's essay on the '65 training camp -- based on interviews with team members -- Leafs '65 is the ultimate tribute to the Stanley Cup-winning Toronto Maple Leafs, to a forgotten era of hockey, and to a moment in Canadian history that will resonate with any reader.From the Hardcover edition.By Kevin Gibson. 0799
As engaging as the great game itself, the stories behind the National Hockey League are entertaining, fascinating and, at times,…
unbelievable. Faux facts emerge from urban legends, conspiracy theories and coincidences, leaving sports fans to debate truth and fiction in the world of hockey trivia. Few are better qualified to both debunk falsehoods and nail down amazing facts than TSN stats archaeologist Kevin Gibson, whose book Of Myths and Sticks blows the whistle on all hockey matters from the mainstream to the obscure.What was the date of the first NHL game? Who scored the first goal and which team won? Did Gordie Howe ever actually have a Gordie Howe hat trick? Gibson offers definitive answers to these fundamental questions, but also contributes fascinating background nobody else thought to ask about, such as game-time weather, contract disputes and the flu epidemic that claimed the lives of two players and cancelled the 1919 Stanley Cup Final. Gibson scores laughs with true facts from between the posts, noting that legendary Canadiens goalie Georges Vezina sired 24 children ("he was known for saves on the ice and scoring off"), and that the Quebec Bulldogs' shameful record of 4-20 may have been due, in part, to the worst nickname ever for a goaltender ("Holes"). The myth of the Original Six is down-sized to the Original One, as Gibson points out that the Montreal Canadiens is the only team to have been around at the start of the NHL and to have retained their original team name.Other highlights include hall-of-famers, hall-of-shamers and an extensive "On This Date" chapter that highlights 366 trivia-worthy moments from 95 years of hockey history. Combining extensive research, humor and keen curiosity, Of Myths and Sticks is hockey's version of MythBusters-what's true, what's not, and how can we make finding out almost as entertaining as watching the game.By Don Cherry. 2014
There's no holding him back. Known for his opinions--and unabashed expression of them--Don Cherry has been causing debate for decades.…
Topics on "Coach's Corner" sometimes veer away from sports and on to other matters that are near and dear to Cherry's heart: the war in Afghanistan and politics, among many others. In Straight Up and Personal, Cherry shares his thoughts on a broader range of issues than he ever has before. He shares some of his personal experiences on and off the ice, and offers the lessons he's learned along the way. This is Don Cherry: straight up and personal.