Hockey Book Reviews.com

Austrian goaltender Bernd Bruckler pulls the curtain on life in Russian hockey in his KHL memoir “ This is Russia: Life in the KHL - Doctors, bazas and millions of air miles ” Bernd Bruckler spent three seasons in the “Kontinentalnaya Hokkeynaya Liga” in Russia, better known simply as the KHL. Established in 2008, the KHL has quickly become the top European hockey league, with ambitions to challenge the NHL for the hockey supremacy of the world. Bruckler played two seasons with Torpedo Nizhny Novogorod, and one season with Sibir Novosibirsk in Siberia. In this memoir he tells what it’s like to be an import player in Russia, and the challenges he faced with the language, the culture, and the hockey. He talks about life in the baza, his teammates, doctors, pills, training camps, the saunas, and the money. Oh the money! “In my three years in the KHL, I saw things I thought I’d never see, but I’m glad I did. Some things were wonderful, others were horrible, and some things were just exp...

Risto Pakarinen had just a wonderful post on his website about his first and still favorite hockey book in his collection - Valeri Kharlamov's 1979 autobiography, written in Finnish. First, he made it clear how much he truly loved this book: It’s dog-eared, it’s underlined, it’s been photocopied and plagiarized (in my school essays), it’s been with me from breakfast to bedtime and back in a day, it’s got food stains and other smudge, I’ve read it as a pre-teen, a teen, a young adult, and as a grown man – and I’ll be reading it again and again in the future. I’ve had it with me on the bus and to the gym, I’ve studied it, memorized it, and lived it. Then, he answered his friend's question as to whether he would sell it to him, for any price. "Not for 20, 30, or 100 euro. A hundred euro is not enough because 500 is not enough. Sure, 500 euro might get me a trip to New York City, or buy me that Lego Star Wars Death Star I’ve been saving for, but I can’t ask a guy to p...

You can be forgiven if you are not a fan of NHL.com. The website is very busy and crowded, and easy to get overwhelmed, and there's tons of other, more impartial sites out there. But NHL.com does have some of the best feature writing and feature writers in the business working for them. For a long time I've been faithfully reading Bill Meltzer's "Across The Pond," Phil Coffey's "Ice Age" and Evan Weiner's "Off The Wall." Another favorite of mine is Risto Pakarinen 's contributions to the NHL.com blogging community Only now I've found a more enjoyable and completely new experience in reading it. Pakarinen has published his blog entries into the book Off The Post: Hockey Stories From Around The World . Pakarinen is no stranger to the hockey world. He's a die hard fan who turned his obsession with pucks, ice, Valeri Kharlamov and Wayne Gretzky into a career of journalism . The Swedish-based freelance journalist from Finland is...