Here’s part two of the list I started in 2007: updates including Jack Falla, some historical material, some new publications.
| Searching For Bobby Orr, Stephen Brunt. How do you define Bobby Orr? Great player? Career cut short by injuries? Definition of the Bruins franchise? Poster boy wonder for agent impropriety and conflicts of interest? Brunt explores every theme with the right mix of detail, interest and narrative; this isn’t an encyclopedia of Bobby Orr’s great moments as much as it is a montage of what made him great despite an encyclopedia of encumbrances. | |
| Hockey Dad Chronicles, Ed Wenck. Summarizes what most of us with kids playing hockey go through every weekend morning during the school year, or hockey season, depending upon how you measure it. It’s less cynical than a Little League book, more truthful than something written as a movie script. | |
| Home Ice, Jack Falla. I’ve now given this book as a gift to more people than I can count. Falla covered the Bruins in detail and hockey in general for the Mass media, but this book contains his short stories about his backyard rink. What comes out is a love of the game that pervades every angle of his life — why else would he incrementally engineer his boards, making them easier to install and tear down year after year? Falla bottles up the warmth and spirit of kids tearing around a frozen pond, on a personal scale, only wearing out when the daylight fades long before the energy and passion ebb. | |
| Open Ice, Jack Falla. The sequel to both “Home Ice” and “Saved,” this one was published immediately before Falla’s way too early passing in 2008. While his first collection of essays captures the joys of a home rink, this one covers the entire spectrum of hockey; reading it I felt an old emotion rekindled or a joyful moment resurfaced, bringing my favorite moments to life again and again. | |
| Saved, Jack Falla. Completing the hat trick of Falla’s work is a hockey novel. Hockey fiction is about as rare and tough as a flawless diamond; even “Slap Shot” was based mostly on the real-world adventures of Dave Hanson (see below). Falla makes a cameo appearance in this book (read both short story collections first to find the Hidden Jack). It has the same feel-good quality as his short stories, and is more credible than a Broadway musical. | |
| Out of Print | The Seven AM Practice, Roy MacGregor. I adore MacGregor’s work, and you can pick this one on the cheap from Amazon. It’s another collection of stories about how hockey tradition forms in the spaces between generations and family members. |
| Hobey Baker, American Legend, Emil Salvini. Published by the Hobey Baker Foundation, this is a cross between an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and a history book (Baker is the basis for Amory in Fitzgerald’s “This Side of Paradise”). It presents a fair and balanced view of one of the most spectacular athletes of the early 20th century. | |
| Slap Shot Original, Dave Hanson. The back story to the movie “Slap Shot.” It’s frightening to see how much of the movie is only a minor caricature of real life, and Hanson’s writing stands up as a memoir. The movie is the “Dark Side of the Moon” equivalent of sports films, having legs that have run for more than 25 years, and Hanson’s book is like being in the locker room before, during and after the game that became a movie. | |
| Zamboni, Eric Dregni. Everything you wanted to know about how ice is cut, how and why the Zamboni came to be, and how one family found a need and filled it. |
