A wildly evocative chronicle of the decade that changed hockey forever. "Lady Byng died in Boston" read a sign in the Garden arena in 1970, a cheery dismissal of the NHL trophy awarded the game's most gentlemanly player. A new age of hockey was dawning. For 30 years, hockey was an orderly and (relatively) well-behaved sport. There was one Commissioner, six teams and five colours--red, white, black, blue and yellow. Oh, and one nationality. Until 1967, every player, coach, referee and GM in the NHL had been a Canadian. And then came NHL expansion, the founding of the WHA, and garish new uniforms. The Seventies had arrived: the era that gave us not only disco, polyester suits, lava lamps and mullets but also the movie Slap Shot and the arrest of ten NHL players for on-ice mayhem. But it also gave us hockey's greatest encounter (the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit), its most splendid team, the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens, and the most aesthetically satisfying game--the three-all tie on New Year's Eve, 1975, between the Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army. Modern hockey was born in the sport's wild, sensational, sometimes ugly Seventies growth spurt. The forces at play in the decade's battle for hockey supremacy--dazzling speed vs. brute force--are now, for better or worse, part of hockey's DNA. This book is a welcome reappraisal of the ten years that changed how the sport was played and experienced. Informed by first-hand interviews with players and game officials, and sprinkled with sidebars on the art and artifacts that defined Seventies hockey, the book brings dramatically alive hockey's most eventful, exciting decade.

Hockey used to be Canada’s game. What happened? A renowned sports expert details the sellout of a sport Canada once dominated to big-money U.S. corporatization and enumerates the effects, including declining amateur participation and audience size. Hockey is still Canada’s most popular spectator sport. Yet, many fans question how organized hockey serves the country of its origin as they watch the NHL expand ever deeper into an indifferent American south, taking the best young Canadian talent and leaving major Canadian markets in Quebec, the Maritimes and the Prairies in the cold. Minor hockey, once the pride of smaller communities, now serves as a brutal corporate feeder system for the NHL, treating underpaid teenagers like chattel, often shipping players as young as fourteen far away from their homes and families on short notice. Neil Longley contrasts the current state of the game with the way it was before the expansion era, when hockey teams were nurtured and supported at the community level, a system still practiced in much of Europe. In one of the most perceptive and authoritative analyses yet written on modern hockey history, Professor Longley finds no magic formula for putting heart and local pride back in Canada’s game, but makes a strong case for placing today’s corporate system “in a more realistic, less-Disneyfied, less sanitized, context.”

A riveting memoir of hockey, family, and addiction from a veteran NHL defenseman. In Philadelphia Flyers orange and black, Chris Therien cut an imposing figure on the ice, a stalwart physical presence for over a decade in the NHL. But by the end of his playing career, he was concealing a much greater battle with alcoholism which bled into his professional and family life. The defenseman-turned-analyst now opens up candidly and completely, reflecting on his life and career with perspective gained from over 10 years of sobriety. Therien takes readers from the blue line to the broadcast booth, sharing untold stories from life in pro hockey while laying bare his private struggle with addiction, including his ultimate low in 2006 after the death of his sister. Road to Redemption also details Therien's deep bond with the city of Philadelphia and his new path helping others find recovery from drug or alcohol abuse. Hockey fans will not want to miss this heartfelt and vulnerable tale.

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Bruins’ 1970 Stanley Cup championship season by reliving all the moments in Kooks and Degenerates on Ice. While the United States seethed from racial violence, war, and mass shootings, the 1969-70 “Big, Bad Bruins,” led by the legendary Bobby Orr, brushed off their perennial losing ways to defeat the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Finals for their first championship in 29 years. In Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey, Thomas J. Whalen recounts all the memorable moments from that championship season. Behind the no-nonsense yet inspired leadership of head coach Harry Sinden, the once laughingstock Bruins became the talk of the sporting world. Nicknamed the “Big, Bad Bruins” for their propensity to out-brawl and intimidate their opponents, the team rallied around the otherworldly play of Bobby Orr and his hard-hitting teammates to take the NHL by surprise in a season to remember. Kooks and Degenerates on Ice brings to life all the colorful personalities and iconic players from this Stanley Cup-raising team. In addition, the season is placed into its historical context as the United States struggled with issues of war, race, politics, and class, making this a must-read for sports enthusiasts, hockey fans, and those interested in twentieth-century American history.

One of the most influential sportsmen of the late 20th century, Johnny F. Bassett's marketing wizardry belied his impact on professional hockey and football. A Canadian showman with a Barnumesque flair for spectacle, Bassett challenged the orthodoxy of sports, building sporting utopias in the fatally flawed World Football League, World Hockey Association, and United States Football League. He catered to the common fan, demanded fair treatment of athletes, and forced the sporting establishment to change the way it did business, often to his own detriment. Drawing on archival research and interviews with Bassett's contemporaries, this comprehensive biography chronicles his life in and around professional sports: his quixotic attempt to compete with the Maple Leafs; his stunning coup in signing three members of the reigning Super Bowl champions for his WFL team; his battles with the Canadian government over American football; his audacious marketing of hockey in Alabama; and his rivalry with Donald Trump for the soul of the USFL.

Grade level: 1, 2, 3, 4, e, p, i.