Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on November 11, 2022 The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark by Corey Hirsch, with Sean Patrick Conboy Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022 $32.99 / 9781443461092 * It must be hard to write a good topical hockey book these days. The goalposts, as it were, keep shifting on the zeitgeist as Canada’s national sport transforms with every breaking news story. A decade…
Book review by Daniel Gawthrop posted on The British Columbia Review on April 18, 2022 Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021 $34.99 / 9781772125795 * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from a hyper-defensive gatekeeper mentality. For too long now, the…
So, they’re really doing it. On August 1—a time of year when most players are on golf courses, water skis, or houseboats, enjoying a final month of freedom before the next season’s training camp—twenty-four of the National Hockey League’s thirty-one teams will begin competing for the 2020 Stanley Cup. At least, that’s the plan until the realities of a global pandemic take over. Yes, at a time when U.S. deaths from COVID-19 are pushing…
Now that the National Hockey League has finally confirmed it is sending its players to the Sochi Winter Olympics—and just weeks after Russian president Vladimir Putin unveiled some of the most homophobic laws on the planet —the obvious question for many is: so what will happen to the “You Can Play” project, and the NHL players who have endorsed it, some of whom will presumably crack the line-ups of Team Canada and various other participating nations?…