“The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings”, by Helene St. James, forward by Chris Osgood

 

Triumph Books, 336 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1629377773

Evidently, there are a bunch of these The Big 50 books out there featuring sports teams like the Cincinnati Reds or New York Giants, but the one that concerns us today is The Big 50: Detroit Red Wings by Helene St. James, who has covered the team for the Detroit Free Press since 1996, with a forward by Chris Osgood, the sometimes cheered and sometimes maligned former goalie for the Wings for a number of years. What you get are a series of 50 profiles of the men who made (and in some cases, unmade) the Greatest Team in Hockey (screw you, Leafs – and Canadiens, for that matter). There is more to it than that, however, with several little side trips and deviations from the theme.

Such as some hard-to-answer questions about the Wings, like: What if Marguerite Norris had kept control of the Red Wings? Would there never have been a 42-year Stanley Cup drought? Or what if Colleen Howe had brokered a deal with Gordie to play with teenaged sons Mark and Marty in Detroit? How about what if the Wings had stuck to their guns and drafted Pavel Bure in the 1989 draft to go with Lidstrom, Fedorov and Konstantinov? Or even better, what if they had drafted Jaromír Jágr third overall in 1990 rather than Keith Primeau? (Or Derian Hatcher? Or Keith Tkachuk? Or Martin Brodeur? Or…anyone else?) St. James discusses it all from all eras of the Hockeytown franchise.

Probert vs. Kocur. McCarty vs. Lemieux. Everybody vs. Roy. The Fabulous Fifties. The Russian Five. The Captain. It’s all here, a mini-encyclopedia about the Detroit Red Wings that relives their years of glory and gives hope for better days ahead.