Saturday, April 9, 2022

“Red Wings Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Real Fan!” by Nicholas J. Cotsonika

 

192 pages, Triumph Books, ISBN-13: 978-1572437579

This was one of my Dad’s books; my brothers and I bought it for him for Father’s Day (I think) one year. Really, though, there’s not much here, just a lot of anecdotes and trivia spread over 192 pages or so, with a majority of the facts and figures concentrated on the modern-era, or 1997 to 2006, when it was published. This is a shame, as the earlier perspectives on Red Wings teams are rather shallow, those past teams being the very foundations of Hockeytown (as Dad never got tired of telling us). But the book is not an exhaustive history of the team, merely a fan’s introductory volume. Each chapter is sprinkled with random facts and trivia questions, the answers to which I knew more often than not (no, really). I found that, for the most part, I was fairly familiar with a lot of the stories, especially as they were concentrated on the championship teams of ’97, ’98 and ’02, but two tales really stood out for me: Jack Adams’ shenanigans in trying to drum up ticket sales after the crash of ’29; and the life of a modern-day NHL Scout. Not a bad book at all, just a lightweight, easy read.

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