Future Greats And Heartbreaks by Gare Joyce

Gary Joyce is a literary gift to the sports world. He is just a marvelous writer, able to paint beautiful imagery with his keyboard. And hockey fans should count themselves as very lucky that Joyce accidentally became a hockey writer.

That's one the earliest of revelations in his new book Future Greats and Heartbreaks: a Season Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts. He also reveals a life long passion of studying and analyzing sports drafts, a passion that many fans share.

For some fans it is all about hope. Hope of what is to come. For others, like Joyce, it is about academics, which in the sports world doesn't always have a place.

To further educate himself and his readers, Joyce sets out to explore the tightly locked hidden world of talent scouting. He is in search of the theory behind scouting, looking for trends as surely there must be some careful strategy when handing out million dollar contracts to junior players and college kids.

Frankly, there isn't. Apparently. The author concludes "There was no unified theory, no logic." In that sense, I felt what the author must have ultimately felt - disappointment.

Not disappointment in the book, as it is a gem by Doubleday Canada and worthy of your purchasing consideration. No, the disappointment lies in the scouting institution.

I think Joyce, like myself and probably many other fans, entered into this book with some assumptions about the depth scouts go to dig information on the players. Sure, we all know they dissect their on ice performance to no end, but I always figured what separates the best drafting teams from the worst drafting teams was the in depth background checks, personality analysis, parental and other outside influences, and any last circumstance that might affect their play and their development. When ranking 100s of players on a draft list, I figured it was the human intangibles that more often than not separated players of equal value.

Wrong.

Or at least that is the way it was with Doug MacLean's Columbus Blue Jackets organization, the only team that would grant the journalist mostly unfettered access to the scouts, the meetings and the war room for the 2006 and 2007 NHL draft.

The Jackets were a notoriously poor drafting team under MacLean, and when I read it was Columbus who Joyce was shadowing, a warning flag immediately shot up for me. And I think I was right.

You almost hope Joyce's findings were skewed by this poor organization. In all likelihood any skewing is not terribly significant, given the NHL's crap shoot history at the draft, but it sure would be interesting to see how Detroit or Ottawa does things in comparison.

Joyce looks at what life is like to be an unheralded scout - low pay, constant travel, terrible motel rooms and no thanks. He also exposes it as surprisingly political, and, not surprisingly, old school. He then tries to use his journalism training to scout player, with the intent of comparing his findings with that of the traditional bird dogs.

I think Joyce's look at the scouting world has the potential to let that old school scouting world look at itself and it's archaic ways. I'm almost shocked at the lack of off-ice background work done by the scouts. In many ways the trained journalist was able to see more than the scouts.

Not that that helped matters in the end, though. Joyce was not high on Phil Kessel, based largely on character. It is still early, but Kessel is now proving his detractors all wrong in Boston. Joyce also gives us some interesting and personal looks into the lives of prospects like Angelo Esposito and Akim Aliu, and his own thoughts on many, many other prospects. By doing so he lets his readers get a hint of what it must be like to on the opposite end of the scouting spectrum: to be the player everyone is tearing apart.

After reading this book, the draft will remain about hope for me. But I'm not certain it is about academics now, if it ever was. Perhaps the best drafting teams have already figured that out and corrected it.

Though many of the mysteries of NHL scouting remain unsolved (or perhaps unsolvable?) Gare Joyce's Future Greats and Heartbreaks: a Season Undercover in the Secret World of NHL Scouts is an excellent hockey book. Check it out today at your local bookseller.

Win A Copy Of This Book! Hockey Book Reviews.com in conjunction with Double Day/Random House publishing is giving away 2 signed copies of this book. All you have to do is tell me two other hockey books published by Double Day/Random House in 2007. Here's a good place to look. Then email your answers and to hockeybookcontest@hotmail.com. A draw from all correct answers will take place on December 1st, 2007!

Also See: Gare Joyce is once again trying his hand at blogging, offering http://scoutshonourbygarejoyce.blogspot.com/ as a post script of the book. Who knows, over time it may be just the beginning of the next chapter.

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