Hockey's Glory Days

The best purchase I made on my recent trip to Toronto, other than a couple of pitchers of beer, was made in Chapters book store. It was called Hockey’s Glory Days (stories from the original six era) and was written by hockey historian and former Hockey Night in Canada commentator Brian McFarlane.

Now, first let me tell you that I’m not a real big reader and will barely ever pick up a book if I don’t have to, but this is one of those books that I didn’t want to stop reading.

The book starts off with a real nice opening from Terrible Ted Lindsay and is then broken up into six chapters, one for each original team.

In each chapter there are twenty or so short stories and really nice full size photos on about every other page.

Some of the best stories I’ve read so far had to do with Aurel Joliat causing multiple brawls at a hockey legends dinner when he was in his 70’s, Gerry Cheevers telling a kid in Montreal that he was going to cut his dog’s balls off, and Eddie Shore, who owned a team in Springfield after he retired, making players practice tap dancing in hotel lobbies and tying his goalie to the net during practice.

These and multiple other stories will leave you more surprised than when Martin St.Louis watched Alex Ovechkin eat a bag of chips on the ice at last year’s all star game.