Putting A Roof On Winter: Hockey's Rise from Sport to Spectacle

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The fans in the Forum were pushing and shouting and cursing their way onto Ste. Catherine Street, where they collided with the mob protesting Rocket Richard's suspension. The friction soon generated flame, leaping into the St. Patrick's night skies of Montreal as the mob rampaged along three miles of central Montreal, smashing, looting, and baying for blood... But how did a game born on frozen ponds move the otherwise chilly hearts of a cold climate to this?"

That is the central question Michael McKinley sets out to answer in this thrilling ride through hockey's first indoor century. Delving deeply into hockey's archives, he writes of the fire and passion underlying the facts and statistics. With a storyteller's artistry, he shapes hockey's legends into a freshly painted pageant of gods and mortals, saints and serpents who move through hockey's indoor temples with such bravura that we cheer, curse, and sometimes weep over their exploits.

Mythic early heroes -- Cyclone Taylor, Newsy Lalonde, Hobey Baker. The tragic genius of Howie Morenz. The incendiary brilliance of Rocket Richard. The doomed heroism of Bobby Orr. Tyrannical owners -- the Red Wings' despotic Jack Adams, the Leafs' brilliant, bigoted, and bullying Conn Smythe. The unlikely saviours of a nation's pride in the first Canada-Soviet Summit series.