THE OVECHKIN PROJECT by Damien Cox and Gare Joyce is supposed to be “A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Hockey’s Most Dangerous Player.” The book mainly focuses on the 2009-2010 season, perhaps the worst of Ovechkin’s career, featuring a stunning Olympic loss, a stunning Stanley Cup playoff loss, and a disappointing World Ice Hockey Championships loss. The [...]

FORGOTTEN MIRACLE is the story of the U.S.’s 1960 gold-medal-winning Olympic hockey team. It was the first U.S. team to win an Olympic gold medal in hockey. The premise for the documentary is that before there was a Miracle on Ice in upstate New York, there was a miracle on ice in Squaw Valley, California, [...]

HBO’s documentary on the 1970s Flyers, BROAD STREET BULLIES, is great because it doesn’t apologize for them. It doesn’t reinvent them as misunderstood guys. It doesn’t act like the NHL ever really like the Flyers. Instead, the documentary is a celebration of the 1970s Flyers and what they meant to the city of Philadelphia and [...]

THE BALLAD OF THE WHISKEY ROBBER is the incredible true-life story of Attila Ambrus, a “professional” goalie by day and a bank robber by night (and sometimes day). The book is an exciting page-turner, as entrancing as any piece of fiction you’ll pick up. But it’s also a nice snapshot of post-Communism Hungary. It was [...]

SEAHAWK by goalie Bruce Valley is an interesting look at amateur hockey in New Hampshire in the 1950s. Valley does a nice job capturing the excitement and impact of amateur teams, like the Rye Seahawks, for whom he played goalie. Unfortunately, he never really puts the amateur team in a context. Valley tells us what [...]

Mark Moore’s SAVING THE GAME came out in 2006 and I managed to avoid hearing anything about it until late 2008. I was watching HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA and someone off-handedly asked Dominic Moore about his brother’s book. I did some research and found out about SAVING THE GAME. Mark Moore played in the Penguins [...]