“The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles. A Centennial History” by D’Arcy Jenish

 

448 pages, Anchor Canada, ISBN-13: 978-0385671484

Hockey has been a part of my whole life thanks to my Dad; he was a dyed-in-the-wool Detroit Red Wings fan from the day he was born and thrived and suffered with his team through thick and thin. I was never much of a sport fan growing up – indeed, for many years I was actively hostile to sports of any kind – but that changed upon my maturity, and I’m glad I was able to share in another of my Dad’s passions before he passed (the others were Formula 1 racing and the American Civil War). But I was still ignorant of so much, and so when I stumbled upon The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles. A Centennial History by D’Arcy Jenish I saw it as a way of correcting this particular flaw and jumped at it.

Published in 2016 as a celebration of a century’s worth of professional hockey, Jenish’s book traces the foundations of the NHL from before it’s official founding a decade later (with ten teams, no less; “Original 6” refers to the six teams that survived past that date). It’s all there, too, as the league fights to establish itself, grow the sport in the States, suffers contraction and promotes expansion, struggles with the aspirations of players versus the motives of owners, expands again and tries to adapt to the modern entertainment market. Somehow, Jenish manages to make all of these off-ice machinations interesting – or at least not-boring; thankfully he spares us the minutes of board meetings or lawyerly jargon.

And I must stress that The NHL is a history of the business of hockey; on-ice developments and rule changes are mentioned but typically in passing. The men who made the League – the owners, the coaches and even the players – are what Jenish focuses on, so if you wanted to know how the Icing rule came about or why fighting is tolerated then you won’t like it. I, for one, was engrossed by the backstage shenanigans these hockey-mad businessmen and players got into and how and why the League became what it is today. I may not like all the decisions that were made or the arguments that were launched, but after I finished this book I at least understood why things turned out the way they did.

The NHL was as interesting as it was informative, as I learned how North America’s 4^th Sport was founded and grew and contracted and suffered and thrived and survived. The culture of hockey, the fan base, the history of how the sport came about and developed – these are topics for another book, one I will have to track down.