Ice capades

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This article was published 03/11/2018 (2716 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Summer’s over, the drought has ended: NHL hockey is back.

If that alone isn’t enough for you, a pair of new hockey history books are sure to get fans fired up for the season faster than Don Cherry can say “Let’s go!”

With The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL, Sean McIndoe delivers a highly readable look back at the National Hockey League’s first century of operation, from the days of the rover through the Original Six, early expansion and the ongoing Gary Bettman era. McIndoe’s irreverent and informative style, which has made him one of the most entertaining online hockey writers working today, is on full display throughout as he shares “a fan’s perspective” on the league’s many highs and lows, from the making of dynasties to arena fires (both literal and figurative).

“No matter how long you’ve been a hockey fan, you’ve known the sinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, some of the people in charge here don’t always know what they’re doing,” McIndoe writes in his introduction.

An Ontario-based columnist who has written for Grantland, Sportsnet, Vice Sports and, most recently, the Athletic, McIndoe doesn’t miss an opportunity to skewer the NHL’s top brass. Between early bungled expansion plans and relocations, work stoppages, the league’s continued reluctance to actively address violence and head trauma and more, there’s certainly no shortage of blunders to highlight.

But it’s not all a roast. Key events and characters from across every era get a good quick look; between longer chapters, McIndoe offers bite-sized bits of extended strange-but-true trivia on subjects as wide-ranging as how the New York Rangers “teased away” their shot at signing a teenaged Mr. Hockey (otherwise known as Gordie Howe) to the role the box-office success of Harrison Ford’s Air Force One had in keeping centre Joe Sakic in Colorado.

McIndoe does an admirable job of exploring the breadth of the league’s history, but his eye is focused most keenly on the past 25 years. Given how informative and easy to enjoy The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL is, an even deeper dive into the fly-by-night world of professional hockey in the 1970s and early ’80s (or any other previous era, really) would certainly have been welcome.

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McIndoe devotes a chapter to the 1992-93 season (“The Greatest Season Ever”). “If the NHL were scripted entertainment, you’d send the 1992-93 season back to the writers,” he jokes.

“Luckily for fans, the NHL isn’t scripted. And so, in 1992, the league embarked on what would turn out to be the most dramatic and entertaining season ever.”

Longtime Toronto sports writer Damien Cox does him one better, devoting the entirety of his latest, The Last Good Year, to the subject.

Though the epic 1992-93 season has already been explored in print (most notably in Todd Denault’s detail-rich A Season in Time), in The Last Good Year, Cox focuses specifically on the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Los Angeles Kings and their epic seven-game Clarence Campbell Conference final matchup.

Cox breaks up the series game by game, focusing on seven men whose actions, on or off the ice, defined the showdown: Kings players Marty McSorley, Kelly Hrudey and Wayne Gretzky; Leafs forwards Doug Gilmour and Bill Berg; referee Kerry Fraser; and Bruce McNall, then-owner of the L.A. team. Through a mix of new interviews and archival material, Cox provides ample context as he unravels the manifold storylines that followed each team throughout the course of the 1992-93 season through to Game 7’s final buzzer. (The Montreal Canadiens would win the Stanley Cup that year, the last Canadian team to do so.)

“The series serves as a snapshot of a certain time and place in NHL history,” writes Cox, who covered the Leafs at the time for the Toronto Star.

“The NHL (then) was a confusing and compelling cornucopia of stars, goons, goals, fights, corruption, rumours, egos, tradition, scoundrels, fierce competition, raw ambition, intrigue, blood, brilliance and greed. Was the 1992-93 NHL better than the NHL of today? It was a better story, for damn sure.”

The attention to detail and the personal perspectives of the players, coaches and owners involved make The Last Great Year a must-read for hockey history buffs.

Both titles should satisfy readers with a keen interest in learning about or revisiting what the NHL was like before the neutral-zone trap and Bettman’s era of parity, “when passions seemed to run a little higher, burn a little brighter,” or those just looking to kill some time between ice times.

Sheldon Birnie is a beer-league hockey player and a reporter for Canstar Community News.