Warriors of Winter: Rhymes of a Blueliner Balladeer

This is Sheldon Kannegeisser. He was a journeyman defenseman in the 1970s, playing with Pittsburgh, New York Rangers, most notably Los Angeles and then in Vancouver. He was a serviceable defender, eating up minutes reliably and clearing the zone with heady passes and clean plays.

Best known for his alphabet soup surname, Kannegeisser was a bit of a different bird, at least in NHL circles. He was a very devoted Christian. The only thing he read on road trips as much as the bible might have been the Wall Street Journal. He studied economics, but also studied dehydrated foods. He even experimented with hypnotism, claiming the practice increased his peripheral vision.

Kannegeisser retired back in 1978, and has spent the past 30 years or so living in California as an entrepreneur and businnessman, and raising his two sons Brett and Jameson. He also has been working on the motivational speaking circuit.

It was during his guest speaker appearances that Kannegiesser realized just how much people loved to hear stories of hockey in the 1970s. He got the idea of compiling the stories and putting them into a book.

His book is now a reality. Warriors of Winter is a great title, but it is the subtitle that hints at the book's uniqueness: Rhymes of a Blueliner Balladeer. Kannegeisser took the time to take his stories and write them as poems.

Hockey stories are perennial," Kannegiesser said in a recent interview with the North Bay Nugget. And every hockey player you talk to has 10 or 20 hilarious stories. I found I could take those and put them to rhyme and rhythm. The key thing about the majority of these stories is they're all true. And I just made them fun."

Kannegiesser writes about many topics, from hockey fights to life on the road, to his personal relationships with the likes of Bobby Orr, Tim Horton, Gordie Howe and Dave 'Tiger' Williams. He event revisits the 1972 Summit Series with 8 poems, one devoted to each game.

The book has just been published but is not available in bookstores. It can be purchased online at warriorsofwinter.com, as well as at book signings and speaking engagements. A sample chapter about Tim Horton, titled Donuts, is available at the North Bay Nugget website.

The Rangers, The Bruins, And The End of an Era by Jay Moran

If you are a die-hard fan of the Rangers/Bruins rivalry from say 1965 to 1976, The Rangers, the Bruins, and the End of an Era by Jay Moran is the book for you.

Everyone else will likely be too overwhelmed by the size of the book to enjoy it.


Cities have rivalries. Nothing grows the metropolitan antagonism as much as professional sports.

Few cities have as big and as deep rooted Boston and New York. The Giants and Patriots. The Knicks and the Celtics. And there's a little baseball rivalry you may have heard about - the Yankees and the Red Sox.

Let's not forget about hockey. The Bruins and the Rangers have fed into the tale of two cities nicely. Never more so than during the Emile Francis era in New York, 1965 through 1975.

You know, the Big Bad Bruins with Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito. Wayne Cashman running around like a wild man and Gerry Cheevers heroics in nets. Then there's the Broadway Blueshirts, with the famous Goal-a-Game Line with Vic Hadfield and Jean Ratelle and Rod Gilbert. And no one got more caught up in the rivalry than did Brad Park. Then, amazingly enough, Park and Ratelle were traded to Boston for Espo and Ken Hodge, really taking the rivalry to new depths!

This is the focus of new author Jay Moran's book The Rangers, the Bruins, and the End of an Era.

Buy The Book | Amazon.ca - chapters.indigo.ca - Amazon.com |

I have gotten to know Jay a bit over the past couple of years. He often has personal insight into my questions and my writings courtesy of the extensive research he has done for this 644 page (!) book in the form of player interviews. The book also has over 100 previously unpublished photographs.

Extensive, exhaustive, exhilarating. The gigantic volume appears so overwhelming that you would truly have to be a die-hard fan of either the Rangers or the Bruins and of the rivalry from say 1965 to 1975 to truly appreciate this book. Anything less, even the curious types like myself, will be intimidated by the size of the book.

The book's size does it no favors, and it is a shame because this could have been pared down quite easily. In fact, a good amount of the bulk of this book really should not be here.

For example, there are about 150 pages of game summaries. A nice touch yes, but a costly one. This is roughly a $40 book that could have been dropped in price with a lower paper count. Maybe Moran could have printed the summaries the way newspapers print the daily box scores to save space? Even better, perhaps Moran could have used the summaries as a nice drawing card to the book's website.

The bulk of the book's content is within the author's interviews with over 40 players/personalities from both the Bruins and Rangers of that era. But rather than work the various comments into a neatly organized and chronological history of the rivalry, the author simply chose to run transcripts of the interviews. For those of us unfamiliar with the rivalry, getting a taste of it is hard in this fashion. Many of the questions are monotonously repeated, and the players' answers are printed even if they gave a one-word answer or flubbed the question altogether. Just give us the best of the best, and not make us wade through page after page of searching for hidden gems. It is a tiring task, especially if the book has given us little reason to invest ourselves into it that much.

Another concern I had was the players interviewed. Over 40 were, but none of them were named Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk, Ken Hodge, Rod Gilbert, Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield or Brad Park. Without them, the rivalry is nothing. Without them, the book is hollow.

As I said - if you are a real die hard Bruins or Rangers fan of the era from 1965 through 1975, you will want to consider this book. That is a pretty small target audience. If you are curious about the rivalry, you can find value in this book if you are prepared to delve into the player interviews. But most people will be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the book.

Free Previews Of New Boudreau Book

Fans looking forward to Bruce Boudreau's autobiography Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer need to head over to Japer's Rink for free excerpts of the book each day this week.

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Theo Fleury Autobiography Coming

Theo Fleury has been back in the news lately, with his attempted NHL come back bid and rumors of financial disaster.

Fleury has been rather quiet about the latter, choosing to focus on his training. Perhaps he will have more to say in his upcoming autobiography, Playing With Fire. The book, published by HarperCollins, is scheduled to be released in early October.

Buy The Book - | Amazon.ca - Chapters - Amazon.com |

Also, just released was John Wong's Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War. None other than noted hockey author Kevin Shea has already trumpeted to me how good this book is.

Buy The Book - | Amazon.ca - Chapters - Amazon.com |

The Rocket: A Cultural History of Maurice Richard

While there have been a few hockey titles out already in 2009, the hockey book season really is from October through Christmas.

One major entry is already on store bookshelves. Greystone Books and author Benoit Melancon released The Rocket: A Cultural History of Maurice Richard.

Buy The Book | Amazon.ca - Chapters - Amazon.com |

The book was first published in French only and released in Quebec back in 2006. The English version was translated by Fred A. Reed. There is a moving foreword by the eloquent Roy MacGregor and a touching afterword by the elegant Jean Beliveau.

I got my review copy last week. It is a real promising title, with some unique imagery inside. This is a look at Rocket Richard, not so much the man or even the hockey player, but the myth and cultural legend that we made him up to be.

I am off to Penticton for a soccer tournament this week and will be reading the book while travelling. I'll be sure to let you know what I think when I return.

Bargain Book Alerts!

Here's a couple of new additions to the Chapters Bargain Bins

Money Players by Bruce Dowbiggin. $4.99

Money Players is not a fuzzy pink valentine to the game that is played on the ice; it''s a bare-knuckles brawl of a book about how the real game has been played behind closed doors between rich execs and agents. Bruce Dowbiggin''s controversial but eye-opening report takes readers from the locker rooms to the boardrooms. And it''s not a pretty picture.



NHL Official Guide & Record Book 2009 by the National Hockey League. $7.99

This edition, revised and updated for the 2008-09 season, features an easy-to-understand expanded format, new statistics, an index of every retired player since 1917, a detailed breakdown of all the hot prospects, and information on every current player. Photos throughout.