Nobody bleeds Blue like Bob Plager, considered one of the funniest men in hockey. This rollicking book details Plager’s romance with the Bluenotes from day one in 1967 to the present day. He was an original Blues player, a rugged defenseman whose specialty was the hip check. He remains an original personality and a good-humored man whose specialty is now the quick quip. As a master storyteller, Plager packs Tales from the St. Louis Blues Locker Room with insights from every level ...

The National Hockey League saw the birth of a new dynasty in 1980. The New York Islanders had been an expansion franchise in 1972 in the New York City suburbs of Long Island. For years they played in the long shadow of the big-city New York Rangers and were considered the league’s laughingstock during their first season. Miraculously, eight years later, they were champions. Despite their mercurial rise in the 1970s’-which included a first-place overall finish in the 1978-79 season’-the Isl...

A great collection of hockey stories from one of Canada's best writers.Al Strachan (Bestselling author and Toronto Sun sportswriter) is a fixture in the hockey world. His insights are read and enjoyed by fans across North America. Well liked and respected by players and coaches, Al is often given special privileges due to a personal relationship he shares with a hockey insiders that allows him the scoop on a breaking story.Strachan knows hockey and has been writing about it for alm...

Technically it was a minor league, but for hockey fans west of the Mississippi, the Western Hockey League provided major-league entertainment for over 25 years.The WHL was a determined and ambitious professional league, with some 22 teams based in major American and Canadian cities. Known as the Pacific Coast Hockey League prior to 1952, the WHL aspired to establish itself as North America's second major league, a western counterpart to the early eastern Canada-based National Hocke...

The inspirational memoir of the Canadian boxer who fought some of the greatest heavyweights in history, including Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, but lost everything outside the ring.From a tough Toronto childhood as the only son of immigrant parents, through a twenty-three-year career that earned him induction into the World Boxing Hall of Fame, to the public tragedies that decimated his family long after the cheering stopped, George Chuvalo tells his life story as ...

Hockey is the lens through which we see our lives—how we measure right and wrong, how we understand our hopes and fears. So it was for Dave Bidini in 1974, the last year Dave Keon played in Toronto. In a new grade in a new school, Bidini found himself the victim of a bully—a depredation he could understand only by thinking about what the Leafs dauntless captain went through game after game.Throughout his twenty-two-year career, Keon was only in one hockey fight, in his last game as...

The author of Cold War shoots and scores with the only full-length biography to cover the entire playing career of the Red Wings' superstar.Before Gretzky, before Russians played in the National Hockey League, before multimillion-dollar salaries, there was Gordie Howe: the greatest star ever to play hockey. This richly illustrated, thoroughly researched and completely unauthorized biography takes readers behind the sports icon to reveal a man who remains i...

A back-up goalie's hilarious behind-the-mask look at life in the NHLJamie McLennan spent twenty years playing professional hockey. Sort of. As the backup for such legendary goalies as Grant Fuhr, Ron Hextall, Roberto Luongo, and Miikka Kiprusoff, he saw everything--except much playing time. In The Best Seat in the House, McLennan looks back on his unique career, from breaking into the NHL, to working with the legends, to life on the road and in the league, offering readers...

Whether he was scoring top-shelf goals or crushing an opponent into the boards, Jeremy Roenick—widely known as J.R.—was never shy about the way he played hockey. As much as he mixed it up in front of the net, J.R., an NHL veteran of twenty years with five different teams, often found himself in the middle of controversy off the ice as well. Above all else, J.R. was an entertainer, never afraid to dance on the blue line to liven up a game or to spend time with the fans. Now, as a hockey bro...

Hockey legend Gordie Howe once said there were two superstars in the Hull family: Bobby, the Golden Jet and one of the greatest players ever to tie up a pair of skates, and his brother Dennis, who had a solid career with the Chicago Blackhawks, and is now one of the most sought-after public speakers in North America. In The Third Best Hull. Dennis Hull outlines his life in hockey with humorous anecdotes, insights, and stories. Not just another sports autobiography, this book provides insig...

Every young hockey player dreams of one day playing in the NHL, of skating on a line with his hero and drinking champagne in the dressing room after winning the Stanley Cup. But kids should watch what they wish for. They may make it to the pros, like Sean Pronger, only to end up playing for sixteen teams over eleven seasons. They may end up on a team with a guy like the Great One, but skate on his line only in practice when the bona fide first-line centre has the flu. And they may end up d...

Hilarious and touching personal stories of being great in the shadow of greatness, with a foreword by Wayne Gretzky.Did you ever wonder what it would be like to have hockey legend Gordie Howe as your dad? If you're like thousands of Canadians who grew up in the 1960s and '70s, you need look no further than Mark Howe's funny, intimate account of being a Howe.As a boy, Mark played ball hockey with the kids of other Detroit Red Wings on the stairs of the Olymp...