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  • Published: 15 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780385671484
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $49.99

The NHL

100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles




A definitive, revelatory chronicle that no serious hockey fan will want to be without.

In-depth research meets great storytelling in the history of an organization that has been a talking point and newsmaker for 100 years.

     The National Hockey League--born in a Montreal hotel room on November 26, 1917--has much to celebrate as it approaches its centenary. Millions of fans from Montreal to Miami and Edmonton to Anaheim attend NHL games each year, millions more watch on TV and the league pays its best players multi-million annual salaries.
Over the course of its first century, the NHL's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. It has experienced setbacks and triumphs and innumerable crises. The league has awarded many franchises only to see some of them falter, fail and fold. The board of governors--which has included rich eccentrics and at least one future convict--has sometimes been fractured by men who loathed each other. How on earth has the NHL survived? The answer lies in the remarkable fact that it has had only five presidents and one commissioner. Two of these chiefs were stop-gaps. For the balance of league's ninety-plus years, four men have shaped and guided its fortunes and controlled the tough, hard-nosed, sometimes unruly owners who constituted the board of governors.
     This is the story of two perpetual struggles--the one on the ice and the one going on behind the scenes to keep the whole enterprise afloat. D'Arcy Jenish was granted unprecedented access to previously unpublished league files, including revelatory minutes of board meetings, and conducted dozens of hours of interviews with league executives, including commissioner Gary Bettman and former president John Ziegler, as well as well as owners, coaches, general managers and player representatives. He now reveals for the first time the true story behind some of the most significant events of the contemporary era.
    This is a definitive, revelatory chonicle that no serious hockey fan will want to be without.

  • Published: 15 November 2015
  • ISBN: 9780385671484
  • Imprint: Doubleday CAN Titles
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $49.99

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Praise for The NHL

  • "Hockey is a game oft-told tale--yet there is much still in the vaults. D'Arcy Jenish has ransacked the archives to pull together a unique chronicle of people, places and events that shaped the NHL. Augmented with dozens of fresh interviews and reflections, this is a book that challenges conventions about what we think we know while revealing a great deal heretofore unknown. It deserves a place in every serious hockey fan's library."--Rosie DiManno, author of Coach: The Pat Burns Story
  • "In the NHL boardroom, battles between owners can be every bit as intense and calculated as the games played on the ice. Learn through first-hand accounts and archival documents how the NHL was formed, how it survived almost insurmountable financial disasters and how it rose above rival leagues to become the billion-dollar industry it is today. You will be a witness to 100 years of managerial maneuvers and on-ice action as Jenish reveals our great NHL game like none before him. A must-read for every fan."--Kerry Fraser, hockey analyst and long-serving NHL referee
  • "I've always enjoyed reading books about history and here at last is a great one about the NHL. I found it fascinating."--Pat Quinn, former NHL player and head coach
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