In the midst of a Saskatchewan winter what is better to get through an evening with than a book about hockey?
A good choice to fight the long winter nights is The Goaltenders’ Union by Greg Oliver and Richard Kamchen.
“Hockey’s Goaltenders are a contradiction; solitary men in a team game, the last line of defence and the stalwart expected to save the day after every other player’s miscue or collapse. It’s no wonder then that anyone who played the position has had his sanity questioned, yet some of the biggest innovations in the game have come from goaltenders. For support, they can often only turn to other netminders – the peers, goalie coaches, and the few who graduate to the head office or broadcast booth. In the Goaltender’s Union, Greg Oliver and Richard Kamchen talk to the keepers of yesterday and today, finding common threads to their stories. More than 60 goalies are interviewed, plus dozens more coaches and players. From Gilles “Gratoony the Loony” Gratton, who refused to play because the moon was out of alignment with Jupiter, to Jonathan Quick, the athletically driven top goalie in today’s game, the book entertains, enlightens and peeks behind the masks,” details the book cover.
Certainly goaltenders are a quirky lot, faced with being the last line of defence; they are heroes for a good save, and the goat if a soft one flutters by them.
So there is a rich vein of material to draw from.
And as a journalist myself, I do appreciate every athlete has their own story, so when it comes to a book on goaltenders there are hundreds who could offer up their own take on the position.
So how did the authors determine which net minders would make it into the book?
It was a question I put to Oliver, who is a Toronto-based author who has three hockey books under his belt. He is a member of the Society for International Hockey Research and has also written extensively on professional wrestling.
“It's a weird combination of choosing to leave out players that get to speak all the time -- Ken Dryden, for example -- and those with their own books, and those who returned our calls, or who we felt was interesting,” he offered. “The goal was definitely to talk to different-than-usual netminders, and I know Richard and I succeeded in that, but that has also lead to criticism that we didn’t talk to them. We danced with a few that didn't happen too, like Mike Vernon and Jocelyn Thibault. In the end, you can't make someone do an interview.”
In the end the authors have managed a nice mix of true stars of the position, and journeymen whose closest real claim to fame might well be inclusion in a book of this kind.
That doesn’t mean Joe Daley, Phil Myre, and Allan Bester don’t have stories to tell, but they are not stories of stardom either.
As it is the book is a series of ‘vignette-style’ pieces on each goaltender included. The result allows the reader to sort of flip through reading about favourite players, those best remembered or just random stories as one relaxes (yes folks this is a perfect bathroom book for guys).
Every reader will have their favourite story after reading the book, Emile Francis a Saskatchewan-born goaltender and eventual NHL coach.
From the book; “In the same article, Vic Hadfield of the Rangers said, “The players knew he worked so hard and seeing that, they couldn’t help working hard for him.
“It was a lesson Francis learned early on. Born September 13, 1926, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, he grew up in the Depression, when even a nickel hockey puck was out of financial reach. Ingenuity ruled, and frozen horse or cow manure served as projectiles. His father died when Emile was eight years old, so he spent oodles of time with his uncle, who was a defenceman on the North Battleford Beavers senior’s team and later coached his nephew. Sneaking into games when he could, a passion for hockey developed, and he fantasized about the players he heard on the radio from Foster Hewitt on Hockey Night in Canada. Playing net meant that he stayed on the ice for the whole game, a welcome challenge.”
Oliver too has his favourites.
“I really enjoyed exploring the sidebars of sons who become goaltenders like their fathers, which included the likes of the Johnsons, Sauves, Grahames, and similarly, trying to figure out why so few goalies become coaches was fascinating,” he said.
“But for sheer insight into the position, and given that we have followed them all post-hockey as broadcasters, then John Davidson, Brian Hayward and Kelly Hrudey were probably my favourite interviews; and Bobby ‘Chief’ Taylor would be up there too, but we didn't end up profiling him.”
Since everyone has a best-loved net minder, if they are fans enough of hockey to read a book like this at all, I would think feedback in a time of social media would have come thick and fast.
Apparently that has not been the case.
“We haven't gotten a ton of direct feedback, which is surprising, to be honest,” said Oliver. “We have a pretty active Facebook page for the book. In the reviews that I've seen, they have sometime focused on who is not there rather than who is there; as I said earlier, that was part of the goal.”
In my case I was hoping for Curtis Joseph, Johnny Bower, Felix Potvin and a few others, but appreciate no book can be all encompassing.
And of course a book like Goaltenders’ Union will have some misses even from an author perspective.
“With the experience writing Don't Call Me Goon in the books, I kept a much more complete list this time around. We talked to over 100 former goalies, coaches, or players for The Goaltenders' Union,” said Oliver. “From my notes, there are another 50 or so that we went down some sort of path with, whether we called them and they said no, or never bothered to respond. The one I wished had said okay was Kay Whitmore, who is in charge of goaltending from the NHL level.”
In terms of theme, the authors went in looking for a binding thread.
“We really set out to explore the relationship goalies have with goalies, and it's in evidence throughout,” said Oliver. “There's the little-known story of Billy Smith telling Allan Bester to keep his chin up after getting destroyed, or the oft-told tale of Jacques Plante sharing details of the Canadian shooters with Vladislav Tretiak. “Similarly, I talked to the first goalie coach in the NHL, Denis DeJordy, who didn't know what his job was, and then Mitch Korn, who probably is more responsible for the state of goalie coaches than anyone else. Their insight into the position couldn't be more different.”
For Oliver, he continues to write about hockey.
“Right after The Goaltenders' Union was off to the publisher, a new project fell in my lap, exploring historical documents from the Leafs. That became the book, "Written in Blue and White: The Toronto Maple Leafs Contracts and Historical Documents from the Collection of Allan Stitt," and it hit shelves just after The Goaltenders' Union,” he said.
“Then to top that off, I wrote a book with my son, who is now eight, called Duck With The Puck, aimed at kindergarten level readers. So it was a busy fall. Now, the second book of paperwork is almost ready for ECW Press. It'll be called Blue Lines, Goal Lines and Bottom Lines: Hockey Contracts and Historical Documents from the Collection of Allan Stitt.”
Certainly, if you like hockey, and want a read that can be picked up, set down, and picked up again over any time frame then "The Goaltenders’ Union" is a great choice.
You can find it and other Oliver books at www.OliverBooks.ca
