Hockey Book Review: Striking Silver

A full eight years before the Miracle on Ice, the US Olympic hockey team pulled off one of the most miraculous accomplishments in international hockey history. The 1972 US team stunned the hockey world by garnering a silver medal at the Winter Games in Japan.

The silver medal championship was somewhat anti-climatic by today's gold-medal showdown standards. Back then the order of finish was determined by your win-loss record and your goals for and against. After upsetting the Czechoslovakians, Team USA sat in the arena in their casual wear awaiting the outcome of the Russia-Czechoslovakian game. When the Russians won, as expected, the Americans knew they had clinched a very unexpected silver medal, the only medal taken home by American males in the Sapporo games.

The story is even more fascinating when you learn of the military background many of these players were drafted into before the games, including a few who wandered the jungles of Vietnam. Then there was the surprising camaraderie between the Soviet and American players, despite the Cold War's icy grip. And then there's the story of coach Murray Williamson, perhaps as an important a coach in US hockey history as there is, though he gets no credit a la Herb Brooks or Bob Johnson.

Twin brothers Tom and Jerry Caraccioli have chronicled this fascinating saga in their new book, Striking Silver: The Untold Story of America's Forgotten Hockey Team from Sports Publishing L.L.C. Although as goalie Peter Sears suggests, this is the team that no one knew about to begin with.

After laying the ground work, the Caracciolis embarked on a series of interviews with members of the forgotten team, sharing stories of personal triumph and sacrifice. While the interviews don't necessarily flow together as nicely as you would hope, they make for great short reads.

Stars like Mark Howe, Robbie Ftorek, Henry Boucha, Tim Sheehy and Lefty Curran share their stories as do the long forgotten about players like Huffer Christiansen, Daddy Nas Naslund Tom Mellor and Charlie Brown.

The success of the 1972 team was largely ignored due to sparse television coverage by NBC thanks to severe time zone differences. Any recognition earned was further pushed into obscurity when the Americans pulled off the Miracle On Ice in 1980. The Caracciolis examine how 1972 laid the groundwork for success in 1980 and the growth of American hockey beyond.

Striking Silver was one of the most overlooked books in 2006-07. It is truly worth a read. It's not totally about hockey, but about working hard and having dreams come true.

Overall Book Rating: 3/5 Second Liner

Rocket Richard: Reluctant Hero

Friends, I have made a mistake.

In 2000, not long after his death, a coffee table book about Rocket Richard debuted. Chris Goyens and Frank Orr teamed up with Team Power Publishing to give use Maurice Richard: Reluctant Hero.

At the time the book market was flooded with Rocket Richard material. I recall looking at this coffee table book and scoffing at the initial $50. Coffee table books, at least in the hockey genre, tend to be regurgitated photography with very little content. I put the book back on the shelf and probably grabbed a couple of other books for my $50, with the idea maybe I'd check this book out of the library one day.

Boy oh boy was I ever wrong to dismiss this book so early. I finally got a hold of a copy, and I have to say that this may very well be the best book on Maurice Richard that I have ever seen.

It is a coffee table book, so photos are front and center. But there are so many images in here I have never seen, from both on and off the ice. The photos really give a glimpse into the Rocket's life on the ice, but more importantly off the ice including both in the dressing room and with his family.

The true value of this book is the written content. It is a bit of a patch job of selected stories an events as opposed to a perfectly fluent piece of literature, but the stories are greatly insightful and easy to retain. You really can flip open a page or two and read just a bit, reminisce at the photos, and feel that you have just experienced a piece of hockey history.

This book is absolutely beautiful and a must own for any Montreal Canadiens or hockey history buff!

Overall Book Rating: 3/5 Second Liner

Book Review: Walter Gretzky

Hockey is a game of great comebacks. Few comebacks are as inspirational as that of Walter Gretzky.

Walter Gretzky needs no introduction. He is in every way the most ordinary, most humble and most likable man. But he is also the father and teacher of the greatest hockey player of all time. Wayne Gretzky once said his immense talent was not just god given, but "Wally given."

His status as #99's mentor and father and his insightful teachings of the game combine with his amazing ordinariness make him not only a hockey legend in his own right, but the ultimate Canadian hockey dad.

Any Gretzky fan has to be curious what it was like to in the Gretzky house. Walter Gretzky's book On Family, Hockey and Healing gives us not only a glimpse at what it was like for Wayne and Walter on their rise to hockey celebrity, but also about life on the farm, life as a telephone repairman, life as a less famous member of the household and finally life as Canada's most modest celebrity.

The best part about this book is just how easy it reads. I'm a notoriously slow reader, but I zipped through this one. I likened the book's readability to that of the storytelling of an older family member whose stories you can just never get enough of. Walter Gretzky tells a variety of stories that kept me glued to book cover to cover.

And its not all stories about Wayne. In fact, there were very few stories of Wayne as a NHL superstar, which was a bit surprising and very much relieving. Instead Walter talks about staying up late to watch west coast games, silly hi-jinx he and his buddies would get into all around the globe, and of course about the inevitable run-ins with fans. This book really is about Walter, not Wayne, and I'm thankful the publishers towed that line through and through.

The book was written in cooperation with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Walter suffered a severe brain aneurysm in the early 1990s, and it truly is a miracle that he survived. The stroke wiped out many beloved memories, including most of his son's great accomplishments in the NHL.

Through Wayne, Bruce McNall and others, Walter had the best medical coverage money could buy, and Walter realizes how lucky he is compared to others. It is truly amazing what he had to go through. I had very little idea of what are strokes and the recovery processes entailed. Now I am aware, so it is definitely mission accomplished for Walter and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Walter dedicates this book and much of his time nowadays to spreading the word about strokes and his fight for recovery. It's his way of giving back, and of inspiring others.

He is an ordinary man who has lived an extraordinary life. That makes for an extraordinary story captured nicely by Random House, and was the basis for the critically acclaimed CBC docudrama Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story.

Overall Book Rating: 4/5 All Star

When The Lights Went Out

I finally cracked the spine on Gare Joyce's much acclaimed title When the Lights Went Out: How One Brawl Ended Hockey's Cold War and Changed the Game.

The book covers the infamous Canadian-Soviet brawl at the 1987 World Junior Hockey Championships. "The Punch-Up In Piestany" featured the likes of Brendan Shanahan, Pierre Turgeon and Theoren Fleury vs. Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov. The incident is one of the most infamous in hockey history, yet, as Joyce leads us to discover, one of the most significant as well.

Joyce is one of Canada's top sports writers, and almost certainly the tops when it comes to the junior hockey scene. His writing really does define him as "one of this continent's master craftsmen of sporting prose" who is capable of authoring "a superb piece of storytelling," as the book's cover boasts.

They say don't judge a book by its cover, and that would be good advice to heed with "Lights." The cover is unattractive and simplistic, although the Autumn 2007 paperback release (second image) is somewhat improved. But once you crack open the prologue you quickly realize that this is a book that you must read. It isn't a book about a hockey fight, nor a hockey game nor a hockey tournament. This is a book about hockey history, and how the events of this moment in time would change hockey forever.

After reeling me in hook, line and sinker with the prologue, I was ready jump into the main event and the interpretation of its' aftermath. But of course Joyce has to set up the background and the main characters before proceeding. For someone who at least pretends to know my international hockey history, I found this step to cause me to lose my steam. Though obviously necessary, I found it a bit long.

Once I worked my way through the background and through the tournament, I finally found the story's centerpiece. Instead of recreating the scene as it was, Joyce takes a unique approach and tells the story of him watching the game on DVD some 20 years after the fact. Much of the time I felt like I was reading his research notes. While I found the style cumbersome at first, I got used to it and realized it really allowed Joyce to properly display his research. All of his interviews are in past tense, thus allowing the story's characters to comment at the perfect time.

I find the book's true strength is Joyce's unique look into the lives of many of the players. Joyce doesn't focus strictly on the Canadians, but gives equal time to the Russians, allowing for a truly in depth and balanced look at not only this game and this tournament, but the long term aftermath.

The rare look into the Soviet players' lives in the days when the Iron Curtain was crumbling but still standing firm was a treat for me. Reading about Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov's unique backgrounds was truly unique. With many Canadian and Russian protagonists he follows up on each career and life, warts and all, allowing for an incredibly well pieced together portrait of some notable hockey players.

And it's not just the superstars who Joyce profiles. I really enjoyed learning about the lesser-knowns. Players like Stephane Roy, Patrick Roy's brother. And Steve Nemeth, a leader who chose not to fight, and paid an unnecessary price to do so. And Evgeni Davydov, the ridiculously talented winger who never could add up the sum of all his parts.

I opened "Lights" fully aware of the critical acclaim it got. The book did not disappoint. I'd strongly recommend it to any hockey fan.

Overall Book Rating: 4/5 All Star