“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...

For four decades, Gare Joyce has profiled hockey’s icons and obscurities, but he’s saved the strangest and funniest stories for Portrait of a Hockey Scribe.A memoir tracking a child’s worship of sportswriters, Portrait of a Hockey Scribe is a cautionary tale about getting exactly what you want — for Joyce, a seat in Maple Leaf Gardens’ press box.Joyce spares himself no embarrassment in cataloging his persistently humbling beginnings — from...

**#1 National BestsellerThis hockey generation's brightest talent has been plagued by concussions. Now, the very style of play that has brought Crosby such success may be heralding the end of his career.**Sidney Crosby is arguably the best player ever to put on skates. You could argue that Bobby was better, or Wayne, or Gordie. But it would be hard to argue that any of those guys changed the game as much as Sid. No defenceman came along in Bobby's wake to play like him. The...

An award-winning writer sets the record straight on hockey's forgotten golden boy--Bobby HullIn his prime, few could dispute Bobby Hull's athletic brilliance--the first to have five 50-goal seasons, the highest scorer on the 1976 Canada Cup team, the first to use the slapshot as a scoring weapon, and the first hockey player to sign a million-dollar contract. With his body-builder torso, and his 100 mph volleys across a rink, the world of hockey glory was his to los...

When the Lights Went Out tells the story of a moment in the 1987 World Junior Championship that forever changed the lives of the players involved, and ignited a debate that has yet to subside about the way the game is meant to be played.When Team Canada skated onto the ice that night in Piestany, Czechoslovakia, they thought they were 60 minutes away from a gold medal. Future superstars like Brendan Shanahan and Theo Fleury, pitted against Russians like Alexei Fedo...

An in-depth and behind-the-scenes look at how Auston Matthews and a gang of talented young hockey players are breaking from Toronto’s troubled sporting past and rekindling the city’s love for its team.Auston Matthews made history on October 12, 2016 by becoming the first player in the modern game to score four goals in his NHL debut. It was a momentous occasion for the talented young All-Star, but it was equally important for his newly adopted city and its storied,...

The season’s must-have gift book Some sports seem to have a natural home. Soccer in Brazil, rugby in New Zealand, cricket in India. And Canada’s game? Why hockey, of course. But it wasn’t always that way. By 1982, the Soviets had won every World Junior Hockey Championship except one, while Canada had earned only a single bronze medal. And then Hockey Canada launched the Programme of Excellence, a national development system designed to help put together teams that would be able to square o...

Every year since 1968, Leaf fans hope that the new season will be the one that breaks the Stanley Cup drought. Sadly, those hopes are usually dashed mid-season. In the biggest hockey market in North America, with such a huge and loyal fan base, how has the team missed it for so long?It’s the question that every Leafs fan asks (and has been afraid to have answered). Now updated to include both the disastrous 2009–10 season and the 2010–11 season, Al Strachan covers what’s gone wrong...

Looking back on a memorable career, Darren McCarty recounts his time as one of the most visible and beloved members of the Detroit Red Wings as well as his personal struggles with addiction, finances, and women and his daily battles to overcome them. As a member of four Red Wings' Stanley Cup–winning teams, McCarty played the role of enforcer from 1993 to 2004 and returning again in 2008 and 2009. His "Grind Line" with teammates Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby physically overmatched some of th...

Terry Ryan was poised to take the hockey world by storm when he was selected eighth overall by the Montreal Canadiens in the 1995 NHL draft, their highest draft pick in a decade. Expected to go on to become a hockey star, Ryan played a total of eight NHL games for the Canadiens, scoring no goals and no assists: not exactly the career he, or anyone else, was expecting.Though Terry’s NHL career wasn’t long, he experienced a lot and has no shortage of hilarious and fascinating revelat...

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...

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...