Hard-hitting, nonstop action (and that's just what happens off the ice).

Hockey is the fastest of all team sports―an emotional, exhilarating, and highly entertaining blend of speed, finesse, intensity, and bone-crunching physical impact. And the NHL's Nashville Predators are, in every respect, a team to watch. But the story leading up to, and through, the Predators' triumphant first season is every bit as exciting as the game itself.

"Hockey Tonk" tells of one man's dream of bringing a pro team to a city best known for its music industry. The journey from that dream to its fulfillment in an arena filled with 17,000 screaming fans is a story of vision, passion, hard work, perseverance, and commitment to long-term success. It's a story of teamwork and hard-nosed competition, both on and off the ice.

Just a few short years ago, the majority of Nashville, Tennessee, didn't know the difference between a blue line and a line dance. But now Music City has become a pro sports town, thanks to a fiercely competitive hockey team, its business-and community-minded front office, and fan support that, according to "USA Today," is second to none.

A captivating collection of short reads for hockey fans centered around the trials, tribulations and joys of growing up ice hockey. Told with wit and wisdom and contrived to verse, this engaging collection is sure to become a hockey fiction cult classic. Written to delight players young and old, parents, coaches, or anyone who has participated in, or experienced the wonderful world of youth hockey in any way. The driving force, power and pace of the fantasy hockey poetry flows through the metered verse, forming an electric undercurrent to the game as seen through the eyes of the players. The short read format lends itself to both the hockey commute and the warm room.
As the title implies, the book is divided into three sections:
Verses: presented with simplicity for youth reading enjoyment, these offerings span player attributes, attitudes and offer encouragement to young players;
Myths: Short metrical stories based on a shred of truth, but spun to yarns, most written in an easy read format.
Legends: A hat trick of pulsing hockey entertainment. My Antarctica is the initial adventure of the young hockey Goalie King to a special slumber land. He successfully lures the Buffalo Sabres to a quest for his Frozen Cup against his rollicking Penguins team. No, not those Pens from Pittsburgh... real ones, the Arctic Burrs. A sequel finds the King seeking NHL quality training by bringing his now mature Burrs to Buffalo to engage both the Sabres and the Niagara University Purple Eagles in another dream adventure. A third legend opens the door on a stick-on-stick tale of a small-town teen street hockey tournament contrived towin the local sports bar's paper replica of the Stanley Cup.

When the 2004-2005 NHL lockout was realized, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany eagerly absorbed foreigners and locals alike, as out-of-work NHLers looked to keep their game sharp and give back to the communities that taught them to play. Little did they know how much of the experience would prepare them for the new NHL. Join them on this ultimate hockey road trip through Europe in the locker rooms, on the ice and in the streets. Sit behind Jaromir Jagr's mother in Kladno. Admire the Alps with Joe Thornton and Rick Nash. Walk through a pine forest to Peter Forsberg's childhood rink. Debate with Russian police at the Dynamo arena to meet Alexander Ovechkin before he became an NHL star. And experience all the adventures of dozens of NHLers like Danny Briere, Martin St. Louis, Alexei Kovalev, Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexei Yashin, Mike Knuble, Henrik Lundqvist, Zdeno Chara, Daniel Alfredsson, Saku Koivu, Miroslav Satan, Martin Brodeur, Sergei Fedorov and Dominic Hasek. The pain of lost dreams from a canceled season may be turned aside, but these experiences will never be forgotten.

This book probably never would have been written without the owners' lockout which led to the cancelled 2004-05 season. Missing the fastest game in the world and my team, the Maple Leafs, I instead spent many cold and quiet winter nights last season wondering just who were the greatest Leaf players of all-time. What started out as a search for a method of ranking the players evolved into a need to justify the results by organizing all the biographical and statistical data into one place and this is what came out of the research. Interlacing many action segments with the facts, this is an attempt to make sports bios more entertaining and scintillating, as well as to illuminate the great moments in the history of the team. Dating back to 1927, Toronto's team has a rich history integral to that of the NHL and this epistle is a must for all hockey fans, not just fans of the Leafs. So come read about the legendary names of both the past and the present such as Johnny Bower, Busher Jackson, Dave Keon, The Big M, Ed Belfour, Bill Barilko and many, many more.

Long considered Canadian, ice hockey is in truth a worldwide phenomenon--and has been for centuries. In Hockey: A Global History, Stephen Hardy and Andrew C. Holman draw on twenty-five years of research to present THE monumental end-to-end history of the sport. Here is the story of on-ice stars and organizational visionaries, venues and classic games, the evolution of rules and advances in equipment, and the ascendance of corporations and instances of bureaucratic chicanery. Hardy and Holman chart modern hockey's "birthing" in Montreal and follow its migration from Canada south to the United States and east to Europe. The story then shifts from the sport's emergence as a nationalist battlefront to the movement of talent across international borders to the game of today, where men and women at all levels of play lace 'em up on the shinny ponds of Saskatchewan, the wide ice of the Olympics, and across the breadth of Asia. Sweeping in scope and vivid with detail, Hockey: A Global History is the saga of how the coolest game changed the world--and vice versa.

The competition for the senior hockey championship and the Herder Memorial Trophy in Newfoundland and Labrador began in 1935. This book looks at the early days of amateur competition for the coveted trophy, through its glory days of paid players and its eventual return to the grass roots level in the 1990s. It includes a listing of winning teams and players for each year.

On May 2, 1967, Montreal and Toronto faced each other in a battle for hockey supremacy. This was only teh fifth time the teams had ever played each other in the Stanley Cup finals. Toronto led the series 3-2.

But this wasn't simply a game. From the moment Foster Hewitt announced "Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States," the game became a turning point in sports history. That night, the Leafs would win the Cup. The next season, the National Hockey League would expand to twelve teams. Players would form an association to begin collective bargaining. Hockey would become big business. The NHL of the "Original Six" would be a thing of the past.

It was "The Last Hockey Game."

Placing us in the announcers' booth, in the seats of excited fans, and in the skates of the players, Bruce McDougall scores with a spectacular account of every facet of that final fateful match. As we meet players such as Gump Worsley, Tim Horton, Terry Sawchuk, and Eddie Shack, as well as coaches, owners, and fans, "The Last Hockey Game" becomes more than a story of a game. It also becomes an elegy, a lament for an age when, for all its many problems, the game was played for the love of it.

It was the greatest hockey series ever played-and it changed the game forever Cold War evokes as never before those legendary 27 days in September 1972: a time when hockey's two worlds collided, as the perennial world champions from the Soviet Union finally tested themselves against the top professional stars of the National Hockey League. Decided only in the dying seconds of the final game in Moscow, the series captivated fans and non-fans alike with its explosive upsets and unrelenting suspense. Cold War weaves together rich period detail, illuminating anecdote and thrilling hockey action with eyewitness accounts from Paul Henderson, Vladislav Tretiak, Ken Dryden, Yvan Cournoyer, Harry Sinden and many other greats to recreate the series: its heroes and goats, its characters and prima donnas, its moments of poignancy, bravery, hilarity and shame. This book is also about a nation's magnificent obsession. Combining passion and insight with a coolly objective eye, author Roy MacSkimming shows how Canadians' identification with their hockey roots transformed eight "friendly matches" into a bitter, life-or-death struggle between the game's superpowers-and into a symbolic confrontation between hostile political systems. On the eve of the series' anniversary, Cold War artfully documents one of the great mythic dramas in the history of sport.

Uses a question and answer format to explain the basics as well as finer points of this fastest of all team sports.

Kevin Nelson recorded the absurdities and outrages of the nation's basketball courts and baseball fields in several highly successful anthologies of quotations, vignettes, and insults. Now in Slap Shots, Nelson turns his ever vigilant eye and ear to the hockey arena, in a roundup of opinions as sharp as a skater's blades and as out of control as a runaway puck

"Dave has produced what every coach dreams about . . . a smarter drill book for all situations and ages " -- Roger Nielson, National Hockey League head coach for 20 years ""The Incredible Hockey Drill Book" is of great use for all coaches as well as young and older hockey players." -- Jacques Demers, National Hockey League head coach for 10 years (coached the Montreal Canadiens to the Stanley Cup championship in 1993) Properly run practices with well-executed drills are the pillars of effective coaching. In "The Incredible Hockey Drill Book," former NHL coach Dave Chambers provides more than 600 illustrated, easy-to-follow drills for both novice and experienced coaches. These drills, divided into 24 categories, are designed to teach and improve conditioning, skating, checking, offensive and defensive play, goaltending, special teams, and much more. To help implement these drills, Chambers discusses teaching and learning theories and supplies ideas for drill and practice organization. Also included are 175 motivational slogans that may be used in various coaching situations. Coaches will find "The Incredible Hockey Drill Book" an invaluable resource for coaching hockey at all levels. Dave Chambers, author of "Complete Hockey Instruction," has coached a number of championship teams at the junior, university, and international levels. In the NHL, he has worked as head coach and assistant coach with the Quebec Nordiques and the Minnesota North Stars. He teaches at York University in Toronto.

Featuring the insights, strategies, and experiences of the sport's top coaches, The Hockey Coaching Bible sets a new standard for those who teach the game, develop the players, and dominate the ice. Whether head coach or assistant, at the youth level or professional, you will find a wealth of information to improve performance and strengthen your program. You'll go inside the game with 16 of hockey's most respected teachers: * Joe Bertagna * Bill Cleary * Tom Anastos * Guy Gadowsky * Mike Schafer * Marty Palma * Hal Tearse * Mike Cavanaugh * Jack Parker * Rick Comley * Mark Dennehy * Ben Smith * E.J. McGuire * George Gwozdecky * Nate Leaman * Mike Eaves Every facet of coaching is covered. The book features the most effective drills for developing players at each position and in-game strategies for various game situations, including offensive, defensive, and neutral-zone play and power plays and penalty kills. In addition to on-ice Xs and Os, you'll find sage advice for building a program from the ground up, furthering your professional development as a coach, and gaining community and parental support for projecting a positive image and earning the respect of your players and supporters. Never has there been a more comprehensive coaching resource on the game. With The Hockey Coaching Bible, you'll build your program into a powerhouse.

Long considered Canadian, ice hockey is in truth a worldwide phenomenon--and has been for centuries. In Hockey: A Global History, Stephen Hardy and Andrew C. Holman draw on twenty-five years of research to present THE monumental end-to-end history of the sport. Here is the story of on-ice stars and organizational visionaries, venues and classic games, the evolution of rules and advances in equipment, and the ascendance of corporations and instances of bureaucratic chicanery. Hardy and Holman chart modern hockey's "birthing" in Montreal and follow its migration from Canada south to the United States and east to Europe. The story then shifts from the sport's emergence as a nationalist battlefront to the movement of talent across international borders to the game of today, where men and women at all levels of play lace 'em up on the shinny ponds of Saskatchewan, the wide ice of the Olympics, and across the breadth of Asia. Sweeping in scope and vivid with detail, Hockey: A Global History is the saga of how the coolest game changed the world--and vice versa.

The NHL's New York Islanders were struggling. After winning four straight Stanley Cups in the early 1980s, the Islanders had suffered an embarrassing sweep by their geographic rivals, the New York Rangers, in the first round of the 1994 playoffs. Hoping for a new start, the Islanders swapped out their distinctive logo, which featured the letters NY and a map of Long Island, for a cartoon fisherman wearing a rain slicker and gripping a hockey stick. The new logo immediately drew comparisons to the mascot for Gorton's frozen seafood, and opposing fans taunted the team with chants of "We want fish sticks!" During a rebranding process that lasted three torturous seasons, the Islanders unveiled a new mascot, new uniforms, new players, a new coach, and a new owner, which were supposed to signal a return to championship glory. Instead, the team and its fans endured a twenty-eight-month span more humiliating than what most franchises witness over twenty-eight years. Fans beat up the new mascot in the stands. The new coach shoved and spit at players. The Islanders were sold to a supposed billionaire who promised to buy elite players; he turned out to be a con artist and was sent to prison. We Want Fish Sticks examines this era through period sources and interviews with the people who lived it.

2017-18 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the National Hockey League. But the league almost didn't survive its first year. Bob Duff chronicles the trials and tribulations of that first season, and tells the story of that first generation of hockey heroes who lent their names to the game they loved, and helped to make it great. Bob Duff, former sports columnist for the Windsor Star, has covered the NHL since 1988 and is a contributor to The Hockey News and msnbc.com.

The NHL’s New York Islanders were struggling. After winning four straight Stanley Cups in the early 1980s, the Islanders had suffered an embarrassing sweep by their geographic rivals, the New York Rangers, in the first round of the 1994 playoffs. Hoping for a new start, the Islanders swapped out their distinctive logo, which featured the letters NY and a map of Long Island, for a cartoon fisherman wearing a rain slicker and gripping a hockey stick. The new logo immediately drew comparisons to the mascot for Gorton’s frozen seafood, and opposing fans taunted the team with chants of “We want fish sticks!� During a rebranding process that lasted three torturous seasons, the Islanders unveiled a new mascot, new uniforms, new players, a new coach, and a new owner, which were supposed to signal a return to championship glory. Instead, the team and its fans endured a twenty-eight-month span more humiliating than what most franchises witness over twenty-eight years. Fans beat up the new mascot in the stands. The new coach shoved and spit at players. The Islanders were sold to a supposed billionaire who promised to buy elite players; he turned out to be a con artist and was sent to prison. We Want Fish Sticks examines this era through period sources and interviews with the people who lived it.  

How did a small Canadian regional league come to dominate a North American continental sport? Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945 tells the fascinating story of the game off the ice, offering a play-by-play of cooperation and competition among owners, players, arenas, and spectators that produced a major league business enterprise. Ross explores the ways in which the NHL organized itself to maintain long-term stability, deal with its labor force, and adapt its product and structure to the demands of local, regional, and international markets. He argues that sports leagues like the NHL pursued a strategy that responded both to standard commercial incentives and also to consumer demands that the product provide cultural meaning. Leagues successfully used the cartel form - an ostensibly illegal association of businesses that cooperated to monopolize the market for professional hockey - along with a focus on locally branded clubs, to manage competition and attract spectators to the sport. In addition, the NHL had another special challenge: unlike other major leagues, it was a binational league that had to sell and manage its sport in two different countries. Joining the Clubs pays close attention to these national differences, as well as to the context of a historical period characterized by war and peace, by rapid economic growth and dire recession, and by the momentous technological and social changes of the modern age.

Pond Hockey is a fiction tale of a country boy who heads to the big city to seek his fortune, only to encounter defeat. Todd then returns home to his ailing mother where he rediscovers the local pond where he played hockey in his youth. Todd comes to head the men's hockey team as they prepare for the world pond hockey championship in Canada and en route discovers how to put past failures behind him.

A true story of hockey heartbreak, tragedy, and triumph. Sudden Death brings to life the incredible ongoing saga of the Swift Current Broncos hockey team. After a tragic game-day bus accident on December 30, 1986, left four of its star players dead, the first-year Western Hockey League team was faced with nearly insurmountable odds against not only its future success but its very survival. The heartbreaking story made headlines across North America, and the club garnered acclaim when it triumphantly rebounded and won the Canadian Hockey League’s prestigious Memorial Cup in 1989. Many of the surviving Broncos continued their successful hockey careers in the NHL, among them 2012 Hockey Hall of Famer Joe Sakic, Sheldon Kennedy, and Sudden Death co-author Bob Wilkie. Years later the Broncos’ tragedy-to-triumph tale was overshadowed when the team’s former coach, Graham James, was convicted of sexual assault against Sheldon Kennedy, Theoren Fleury, and Todd Holt, all of whom played for him.