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The Lives of Conn Smythe: From the Battlefield to Maple Leaf Gardens: A Hockey Icon's Story
By Kelly Mcparland. 2011
The first full-length biography of one of hockey's - and Canada's - most influential forces, Conn Smythe.While the story of…
the Toronto Maple Leafs has been told many times, there has never been a full biography of the man who created, built and managed the team, turning it from a small-market collection of second-rate players into the hockey and financial powerhouse that dominated Canadian sports and created a collection of Canadian icons along the way. From the 1920s to the mid-1960s, Conn Smythe was one of the best-known, highest-profile figures in the country - irascible, tempestuous, outspoken and controversial. He not only constructed a hockey team that dominated the league for long stretches, but was critical to the growth and shaping of the NHL itself. By building Maple Leaf Gardens and hiring Foster Hewitt to fill Canada's living rooms with weekly broadcasts, he turned Saturday night into hockey night, creating institutions and habits that became central to Canada's character and remain with us today.Smythe's story is much deeper and richer than the tale of a cantankerous hockey owner. Smythe fought in both world wars, fighting at Ypres and Passchendaele in the first war and landing at Normandy in the second. He was wounded in both and spent two years as a POW in a German camp after being shot down in 1917. He grew up in poverty and vowed to escape the life that was so incredibly hard on his family. Smythe was active in politics and ignited a national crisis over conscription that split the Liberal government in two and brought Mackenzie King to the brink of resignation.This book tells the life of one of the country's great characters, a man who helped shape and define us and who left behind national habits and institutions that continue to lay at the heart of what makes Canada, Canada.From the Hardcover edition.The Goal of My Life: A Memoir
By Roger Lajoie, Paul Henderson. 2012
Paul Henderson will forever be recognized and remembered for his goal with 34 seconds remaining in the 8th game of…
the 1972 Summit Series. This goal gave Canada the lead and won them the series and with that the team became known as "the Team of the Century." And Paul's goal as, "the Goal of the Century." But there is more to Paul Henderson than just that one goal and in The Goal of My Life, Henderson opens up about scoring both on and off the ice. A family man and man with deep faith, Henderson lives each day with tremendous appreciation for the gifts life has rewarded him and has not allowed his recent diagnosis with cancer to alter his positive demeanor. Henderson takes fans back to the moment 1972 when Canada won the Summit Series, though additionally shares memories from his entire life and his early days playing hockey through to his retirement from the game and his personal challenges with Leukemia. Henderson is a hero and his book is one that all fans of hockey and life will enjoy.The Best Game You Can Name
By Dave Bidini. 2005
Bidini returns to the game he loves bestIn 2004, Dave Bidini laced on his skates and slid onto the ice…
of Toronto's McCormick Arena to play defence with the Morningstars in the E! Cup tourney. While thrashing around the ice, swiping at the puck and his opponents, Bidini got to thinking about how others see the game. Afterward, he set off to talk to former professional players about their experiences of hockey. The result is vintage Bidini -- an exuberant, evocative, highly personal, and vividly coloured account of his and his team's exploits, interwoven with the voices of such hockey heroes as Frank Mahovlich, Yvan Cournoyer, John Brophy, Steve Larmer, and Ryan Walter.All aspects of the game are up for grabs in The Best Game You Can Name -- the sweetest goals, the worst fights, the trades, the off-ice perks and the on-ice rivalries, not to mention the rotten pranks. Bidini and the former players offer sometimes startling observations about the fans, coaches, owners, other players, and the huge rush of being on the ice, stick in hand, giving everything you have to the best game you can name.From the Hardcover edition.Dropping the Gloves: Inside the Fiercely Combative World of Professional Hockey
By Gary Bettman, Roger Vaughan, Barry Melrose. 2012
Dropping the Gloves candidly tracks Barry Melrose's career in hockey - a road that has not changed substantially for today's…
aspiring players. Not many have Melrose's credentials or his breadth of experience in professional hockey. He's played and coached in Junior Hockey, the American Hockey League, and the NHL. As he says, he's been hired and fired, and had his share of disappointments and failures. He's also had successes at every level. Now an ESPN broadcaster and one of the most respected NHL analysts on television. With his trademark hair, custom suits and energetic style, Melrose is applauded for offering fans his honest - tell it like it is opinion. Written in Barry's voice and style, the narrative follows his career in hockey, from its start in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, through his years in Junior, the WHA, and finally, the NHL. Along the way, Barry muses on the state of the game, what makes some teams work and other fail, and how he worked to instill a winning attitude in all the teams he coached. Filled with behind-the-scene stories of all the legendary players Barry played with or coached - Gretzky, Yzerman, Messier, Bobby Hull, and Brad Park - Dropping the Gloves is a true to life, insiders account of the world of professional hockey and an absolute must read for fans of the game.Sports Illustrated Hockey Talk: From Hat Tricks to Headshots and Everything In-Between
By Sports Illustrated. 2011
From the leader in sports writing comes a collection of stories that examine just about every aspect of the game:…
the players, the league and what it means to the fans. For true hockey fans, there is no sport as great, as fast, as competitive, or as important as their beloved hockey game. The teams, the organizations, and the players are a part of their family and Saturday night is better known as hockey night. As children, we hockey fans would wake at 6am, jump into the back of a cold station wagon and head off with Dad or Mom at the wheel to our hockey games. Sleep deprived, cold and tired - it didn't matter how low we felt because as soon as those skates were laced, it was game-on! We traded the cards, we followed the players, and we watched as our team fought through the regular season to earn their rightful place in the post season. There is nothing like the feeling of seeing your team go all the way, seeing them hoist that cherished Cup that Lord Stanley so kindly gifted to the Dominion of Canada, seeing the tears in the eyes of these grown men, these ice warriors. We love this game of ours, and we can't get enough, so thank you Sports Illustrated for bringing us more.In this book, Sports Illustrated's most prolific hockey writers give us the honest goods on hockey. They tell us about the players, the infractions, the best series, the most contentious of battles and the most glorious of victories. This is hockey in its truest form. This is hockey writing for hockey lovers and with an array of Sports Illustrated photos throw in for added benefit. This is just about the best damn book available on hockey, anywhere, period.From the Trade Paperback edition.The Great One: The Complete Wayne Gretzky Collection
By Sports Illustrated. 2012
Sports Illustrated followed The Great One's career right from the very beginning. Starting in 1978, when Gretzky was a young…
phenom playing for the Soo Greyhounds, they had their best writers cover his rise to fame and subsequent dominance of the sport. His staggering career stats tend to overshadow the struggles he faced in his career -- the early days in Edmonton, when he was establishing himself as the greatest player, but could not lead his team to a cup. The years after the trade that shook the hockey world he spent years trying to lead a new team to glory, only managing to reach the final once more, in 1993, and losing in five games. Covered as well are his forgotten goal-droughts, the thoughts that he had lost his touch in the early nineties. His struggles with injury and playing though his father's near death. The Great One reads not like a sports book, but a biography of one of the greatest athletes of all time.Sports Illustrated's greatest writers all contribute articles, EM Swift, Michael Farber, Jack Kalla, to tell the complete story of Wayne Gretzky's career.The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles
By D'Arcy Jenish. 2013
The National Hockey League -- born in a Montreal hotel room on November 26, 1917 -- has much to celebrate…
as it approaches its centenary. Millions of fans from Montreal to Miami and Edmonton to Anaheim attend NHL games leach year, millions more watch on TV and the league pays its best players multi-million annual salaries.Over the course of its first century, the NHL's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. It has experienced setbacks and triumphs and innumerable crises. The league has awarded many franchises only to see some of them falter, fail and fold. The board of governors - which has included rich eccentrics and at least one future convict - has sometimes been fractured by men who loathed each other. How on earth has the NHL survived? The answer lies in the remarkable fact that it has had only five presidents and one commissioner. Two of these chiefs were stop-gaps. For the balance of league's ninety-plus years, four men have shaped and guided its fortunes and controlled the tough, hard-nosed, sometimes unruly owners who constituted the board of governors. This is the story of two perpetual struggles -- the one on the ice and the one going on behind the scenes to keep the whole enterprise afloat. D'Arcy Jenish was granted unprecedented access to previously unpublished league files, including revelatory minutes of board meetings, and conducted dozens of hours of interviews with league executives, including commissioner Gary Bettman and former president John Ziegler, as well as well as owners, coaches, general managers and player representatives. He now reveals for the first time the true story behind some of the most significant events of the contemporary era. This is a definitive, revelatory chonicle that no serious hockey fan will want to be without.Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places
By Dave Bidini. 2000
99: Gretzky: His Game, His Story
By Roy Macgregor, Al Strachan. 2013
Whether wearing his Edmonton oil-drop, the black and silver colours of L.A., or the famous Rangers sweater from New York,…
all hockey fans agree that Wayne Gretzky was the best hockey player of all time. His point totals, his puck control, and the manner in which he conducted himself both on and off the ice reflected the very best of the game. You can't talk about Gretzky without talking about his records and achievements: 50 goals in just 39 games, 9 Hart Trophies, 10 Art Ross Trophies, 4 Stanley Cups, 215 points in a single season, and, of course, retiring with 2856 points. Each record is a remarkable achievement by the game's most remarkable player, and each will be broken down in this book. Published with Wayne Gretzky's approval and written with his cooperation, this is the Gretzky biography that his fans have so anxiously awaited. Veteran sports journalist Al Strachan has enjoyed an extremely close friendship with Gretzky for well over 25 years, and during this time Strachan has reported on every aspect of his professional career. The two have spent thousands of hours talking about the game and such details as Wayne's move to L.A., managing the 2002 Canadian Olympic team and coaching in Phoenix. Their close friendship has offered each man the opportunity to discuss the game that they both love, and in this book Strachan takes readers on a most remarkable journey and details the life of Wayne Gretzky like it has never been told.With thirty teams in the NHL, "We Are the Goalies" showcases the starting netminder of each club and provides young…
fans with exciting photos, a detailed history, and an introduction to each of these star players. Along with full color photos, young and eager fans will enjoy reading about their goalie heroes.In "We Are the Goal Scorers," the NHLs top point leaders are celebrated for their contribution to the game. Along…
with photos, player history, and personal information, young and eager fans will enjoy learning about each of their hockey heroes.Coach: The Pat Burns Story
By Rosie Dimanno. 2012
Pat Burns was one of the great NHL coaches. He worked with the Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins…
and New Jersey Devils, and seemed always to enjoy instant success. He capped his extraordinary career by coaching the New Jersey Devils to a Stanley Cup victory in 2003. Cancer--his third bout--finally claimed him in 2010, aged 58. Rosie DiManno, who knew Burns well, has written a revealing, exhilarating and heartfelt account of his life: his childhood as a fatherless, solitary male surrounded by many women, his years as a police officer, his glorious coaching career and his long and characteristically valiant ending.Coach is both the first major biography of Burns and one that, with its revelations, personal insights and riveting prose, is--like the man himself--sure to be both controversial and hard to beat. Rosie DiManno knew, liked and admired Burns, and in the writing of this book has interviewed many, many people from every stage of his life. She is not blind to his less endearing qualities, but seeks to explain them.DiManno reveals a man of contradictions--gruff and crude, bullying and sentimental, and easily wounded. She shows, moreover, a man of hockey. The Burns who rode motorcycles, dressed like a cowboy, and sweet-talked the ladies was, says DiManno, a self-creation. His one indisputable, true talent was for coaching hockey. He was a pure coach. DiManno tells a compelling story and helps us to understand a complex man, one who gave little of himself to the public and yet whose funeral was a spectacle. How did that happen? Who was Pat Burns? Rosie DiManno, who witnessed much of the story, has the answers.Don Cherry's Hockey Stories, Part 2
By Don Cherry. 2010
You thought you'd read them all, did you? Well, you haven't.Simultaneously loved and loathed, Don Cherry is one of the…
most talkative and talked-about personalities in hockey today. His more than twenty-five years as a player and coach have informed his popular Hockey Night in Canada commentary segment, "Coach's Corner." And now he's got more stories to share.In Don Cherry's Hockey Stories, Part 2, Grapes tells us about the 2010 Stanley Cup, relays the lessons he's learned both on and off the ice, and takes us inside hockey's mythical players' "code." You'll encounter familiar names from the game and find out who this idol looks up to. You'll travel back in time to Cherry's days playing in the minor leagues. You'll share his experiences of being named Coach of the Year in the NHL and in the AHL. And you'll hear from his kids about what it was like growing up with a dad like Don..Don Cherry tells it like it is, for better or for worse. You won't be disappointed.P.S. Don wants you to know it's a book the whole family can enjoy.From the Hardcover edition.King of Russia: A Year in the Russian Super League
By Dave King, Eric Duhatschek. 2007
A revealing look inside the Russian Super League by its first Canadian coach. Until now no Canadian had penetrated the…
coaching ranks of Russian hockey, but the year after the NHL lockout, Dave King became head coach of the Metallurg Magnitogorsk. From the beginning, King, Canada’s long-time national coach and former coach of both the Flames and Blue Jackets, realized he was in for an adventure. His first meeting with team officials in a Vienna hotel lobby included six fast-talking Russians and the “bag-man” — assistant general manager Oleg Kuprianov, who always carried a little black bag full of U. S. one hundred dollar bills. The mission seemed simple enough: keep the old Soviet style combination play on offence, but improve the team’s defensive play — and win a Russian Super League Championship. Yet, as King’s diary of his time in Russia reveals, coaching an elite Russian team is anything but simple. King of Russiadetails the world of Russian hockey from the inside, intimately acquainting us with the lives of key players, owners, managers, and fans, while granting us a unique perspective on life in an industrial town in the new Russia. And introducing us to Evgeni Malkin, Magnitogorsk’s star and the NHL’s newest phenomenon. From the Hardcover edition.Gretzky to Lemieux: The Story of the 1987 Canada Cup
By Ed Willes. 2007
Gretzky, Lemieux, Messier, Coffey, Fuhr, all on the same team -- in their prime. The greatest collection of hockey talent…
ever assembled, playing the games of their lives.Three epic 6-5 contests between Canada and the Soviet Union decided the '87 Canada Cup.Canada evened the series, after the Soviets won Game 1, when Gretzky's fifth assist of the game set up Lemieux's hat trick, ending Game 2 in double overtime. Game 2 is widely considered one of the greatest hockey games ever played.With time running out in Game 3, after Canada battled back from a 3-0 deficit, Team Canada coach Mike Keenan sent the Gretzky / Lemieux / Hawerchuk line on the ice for a faceoff in Canada's end. The rest is history as Gretzky, Lemieux, and Larry Murphy rushed up the ice, Gretzky skating on the left wing, setting up Lemieux's game-winner in the slot with 1:26 left in the game. Gretzky's pass to Lemieux, followed by Lemieux's goal, is one of the most memorable plays in hockey history.Gretzky to Lemieux captures the on-ice drama that led to the historic three-game final, and the stories behind it. Ed Willes adds depth and weight to the games by revealing the rebellion among Soviet hockey stars in the early days of Glasnost and a crumbling Soviet Union; the trouble brewing for Alan Eagleson; the ascendancy of Mario Lemieux; and the end of the glorious Gretzky era in Edmonton.Packed with interviews of players and coaches, Gretzky to Lemieux tells the full story of the greatest hockey ever played.From the Hardcover edition.True Love and Other Disasters
By Rachel Gibson. 2009
True Love and Other Disasters is a deliciously romantic rom-com from New York Times bestseller Rachel Gibson - perfect for…
fans of Jill Shalvis, Jo Watson and Christina Lauren.Heartache, hockey and heavenly bodies - get ready for another red-hot read from Rachel Gibson When money-bags Virgil Duffy leaves his widow a stash of cash and his beloved ice-hockey team in his will, team captain Ty 'Saint' Savage is furious. The Chinooks are set to win the biggest prize of the season, and a beautiful young ex-stripper taking over the reins is the last thing he needs. Even if Faith, former playmate of the year, is the sexiest woman he's ever laid on. Soon tensions are mounting between the Saint and the Sinner from Vegas - but maybe Ty's forgotten the first rule of play: never underestimate your opponent...Slim and None: My Wild Ride from the WHA to the NHL and All the Way to Hollywood
By Howard Baldwin. 2014
From his start as an owner in the World Hockey Association at the age of 28 (“slim and none” was…
a Boston sportswriter’s assessment of Howard’s chances when he was first awarded the New England Whalers franchise), to winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins and then on to Hollywood success, sports entrepreneur and film producer Howard Baldwin recounts his spirited and hugely entertaining life story.Howard Baldwin has lived his life according to his belief that the life best-lived is one in which we pursue our heart’s desire. He never met a challenge he couldn’t beat. Beginning with his move at the age of twenty-eight from an entry-level position in the ticket office of the Philadelphia Flyers to acquiring and building his own WHA franchise in New England, Howard has built an impressive reputation as a pioneer — and a maverick — in the world of professional hockey. As President of the WHA, Baldwin led the merger with the NHL, and then later became a key figure in the expansion of North American hockey into Russia. Topping his journey in hockey off with a stint as chairman of the Pittsburgh Penguins, he then moved successfully into the film industry, producing a number of outstanding films including the Academy-Award winning Ray.Slim and None is a story of perseverance, persistence, and ultimately, personal fulfilment. Baldwin and Milton have crafted an intimate portrait of a life within hockey spanning from the rebellious 1970s to the tumultuous 1990s and beyond into the exciting world of the movies.Blades of Glory: The True Story of a Young Team Bred to Win
By John Rosengren. 2003
Hockey 365, The Second Period: More Daily Stories from the Ice
By Mike Commito. 2021
More hockey history for every day of the year! Celebrate hockey history with Hockey 365, The Second Period and be…
reminded of why you love hockey every day of the year. Whether you are a long-suffering Leafs fan or you cheer for a team that has actually won a Stanley Cup in the last half-century, this compendium will give you a hockey-history fix no matter your allegiance. From the National Hockey League’s humble beginnings to the empty seats of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Mike Commito has gone back into the vault to bring you even more hockey history. So, get ready, the second period is about to begin.Over the Boards: Lessons from the Ice
By Hayley Wickenheiser. 2021
The greatest women&’s hockey player of all time, Hayley Wickenheiser shares the lessons that won her four Olympic gold medals,…
and hard-earned wisdom distilled from moments when she fell short. There is no one in the world like Hayley Wickenheiser. 13 World Championship appearances. 6 Olympic Games. Hockey Hall of Famer. All while raising a child, earning multiple university degrees, and not benefiting from the financial stability male professional athletes have. She gave the game everything she had—now, Hayley shares what the game gave her. From motherhood to pro leagues to her new career in medicine, Hayley shares the hard-won lessons she learned on and off the ice that helped her not only have a record-breaking hockey career but craft a life filled with joy, growth, and challenges. In her own words, Hayley shares how she rose from the backyard pond and changing in boiler rooms (because girls' dressing rooms didn&’t exist) to Olympic MVP (twice). How becoming a parent made her a better athlete. How she learned to thrive under monumental pressure. But she doesn&’t stop at revealing the pillars to her tremendous success—Hayley delves into her immense failures and how she grew from them. Like Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Abby Wambach before her, Hayley shares her wisdom through personal stories of triumph, relentlessness, and more than a couple confrontations. Told with humour, compassion, and steadfast optimism, Hayley&’s practical advice, coaching, and invaluable perspective inspires readers to never accept &“that&’s not the way we do things&” or &“that hasn&’t been done before&” as limitations. An empowering and pragmatic guide, Hayley encourages readers to not follow in her footsteps, but to carve their own ice.