Tag: Doug MacLean

The Book Shelf: Part 1 of 3

Having stepped away from writing on this site a few weeks ago, I hadn’t decided whether to post the annual Book Shelf feature here. As I finished reading books, I have been writing thumbnails, out of habit more than anything, I suppose. But I wasn’t sure what I would do with them.

However, the Book Shelf is back by popular demand. Well, I received one email asking for it and I know of at least one other person who has been hoping for its appearance.

So here it is . . .

As usual, it will appear in three parts over three days, and the last part will include my top 10 reads of 2023.

Note that I have been cleaning out bookshelves over the past months, so there are some books on this list that have been around for a while and then some.

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All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel — Oh my, S.A. Crosby can write! This time he has conjured a story centred on Titus Crown, a former FBI agent with a skeleton in his closet, who now is the first Black sheriff in the history of a small Virginia city. And now he finds himself chasing a serial killer. This one is bloody, but, oh my, Crosby can write. A taste: “The myth of Main Street in the South has always been a chaste puritanical fantasy. The reality is found on back roads and dirt lanes under a sky gone black. In the back seat of a rust-mottled Buick and the beds of ramshackle trucks.”

The Amateurs: The Story of Four Young Men and Their Quest for an Olympic Gold Medal — Rowing is an interesting sport if only because there isn’t a career lined with gold at the end of the day. But you can’t question the dedication of the athletes involved. In this book published in 1985, author David Halberstam writes about that and a whole lot more as he follows four Americans chasing 1984 Olympic gold. They are friends and they are competitors, which leads to some complicated relationships and an interesting read.

The Appeal — This book by the prolific John Grisham was published in 2008; I have no idea how I hadn’t already read it. Anyway, it was his 21st published book. It begins with a lawsuit involving a company being sued for having contaminated a small community’s drinking water. The jury rules in favour of the plaintiff and Grisham proceeds to put the American judicial and electoral systems on spits and roasts them.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead — John Coglin is with the NYPD and he’s one of the good guys. And then, through no fault of his own, it all goes wrong. Author Michael Ledwidge has given us a gritty read with all kinds of great characters, lots of twists and turns, and a crescendo that leads to a great ending. Highly recommend if you’re into this kind of fiction.

Black & White & Never Right: A Hockey Referee — I stumbled on this book while cleaning up some book shelves early in the year, so it was a re-read. Author Vern Buffey was one of the NHL’s top referees back in the day, before leaving to set up the WHA’s officiating department. This isn’t a long book but it’s full of anecdotes  involving lots of NHL names from the six-team era. He also writes about how the NHL office applied heat and discipline to its on-ice officials, at least it did back then.

Brave Face: Wild Tales of Hockey Goaltenders in the Era Before Masks — This is an entertaining read loaded with terrific anecdotes, great quotes and a whole lot of names from hockey’s past. Yes, it’s mostly about goaltenders — from the well-known like Jacques Plante, Terry Sawchuk and Glenn Hall to lesser-knowns like Gaye Cooley, Russ Gillow and Bob Perreault — and their love-hate relationship with masks. Truth be told, it’s the stories involving the lesser-knowns that are the highlights here. There’s also some neat stuff on retired NHL defenceman Craig Ludwig, a shot blocker extraordinaire, his famous shin pads and his aversion to new equipment. Oh, and don’t let the fierce looking cover scare you away. (Disclaimer: Author Rob Vanstone was part of the sports department during my stint as sports editor of the Regina Leader-Post back in the day.)

City of Dreams — This is the second book in author Don Winslow’s trilogy that chronicles the life and times of Danny Ryan, a Rhode Island gangster who is trying to become an ex-gangster — if that is even possible — somewhere in California or Las Vegas. This is a great writer spinning a terrific yarn with all kinds of characters and plot twists. The first book in the trilogy is City on Fire; the third will be City in Ruins.

Desert Star — Author Michael Connelly brings back Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard for another go-round, this time working a couple of cold murder cases. Ballard has returned to the LAPD and now is in charge of the cold-case unit; Bosch, retired from the LAPD, is working for her on a voluntary basis. . . . If you like the Bosch books, this one won’t disappoint. And there’s a twist at the end that may jar you.

Different Seasons — Is there a writer among us today with an imagination and the writing ability of Stephen King? For starters, his imagination is out of bounds. Seriously. In this book, the prolific King gives us four novellas, tales, as he puts it, “that were too long to be short and too short to be really long.” What they also are is really good and, yes, bordering on the macabre. And they will get inside you and twist your guts. Yes, they will.

Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners or Get Left Behind — Doug MacLean, who has worn a lot of NHL hats, from president to general manager and coach and beyond, writes openly about the NHL draft and he does it from all angles, providing readers with all kinds of information and anecdotes. He does it with the help of former Toronto Sun hockey writer Scott Morrison; the two worked together at Sportsnet not that long ago.

Evolve or Die: Hard Won Lessons from A Hockey Life — Author John Shannon has had a whole lot to do with the way we view hockey on television today. As a long-time producer with Hockey Night in Canada, he shaped a whole lot about the telecasts — remember the Hot Stove? — and was one of the main planners when HNIC switched from one Saturday night game to the doubleheader format in play today. His employment history also includes Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and the NHL, not to mention various American-based networks. This is his story, including the hirings and firings he endured along the way. There is a whole lot of interesting stuff between the covers, but it really could have used a few more anecdotes involving his relationships with NHL players, coaches, general managers and executives.

Finest Hour. Winston S. Churchill 1939-1941 — Author Martin Gilbert examines in microscopic detail the world of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the first years of the Second World War. It seems that anyone who had anything to do with government kept a diary back then, and Gilbert’s meticulous research allows for a tremendous book. Churchill also was the Minister of Defence at the time, and Gilbert really details how much effort he put into obtaining military help from the U.S. Remember that the Americans didn’t enter the Second World War until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, which occurs in the final pages of this book.

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(FIRST OF THREE PARTS)

Scattershooting on a Thursday evening while wondering if Regina is Queen City of Distracted Driving . . .

Scattershooting

A note from Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times: “A pride of lions ate three poachers who broke into a South African game reserve to hunt rhinoceroses, Newsweek reported. This partial score just in: Lions 3, Raiders 0.”

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Here’s another report from Perry: “Heretofore doughy Phil Mickelson, via Twitter, after his sister posted a beach photo in which the golfer looks absolutely ripped: ‘FYI, those weird bumps on the side of my stomach we’ve never seen before, Doc called them obliques and said it’s nothing to worry about.’ ”

Las Vegas bookies have had the most early NFL action on the Chicago Bears and Cleveland Browns. That resulted in this from Janice Hough, aka The Left Coast Sports Babe: “There’s a reason they’ve been able to afford to build all those amazing resorts.”

Department of Pet Peeves — A couple of submissions from Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon: 1. “People who refer to something as ‘very unique’ or ‘rather unique.’ Unique doesn’t take modifiers easily; something is either ‘unique’ or it is not. . . . 2. ‘Imply’ and ‘infer’ aren’t synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably.

ParallelParking

Congrats to old friend Jim Swanson and the Victoria HarbourCats, who have led baseball’s West Coast League in attendance for a sixth straight season. The HarbourCats had 27 home games in 2019, and drew 62,400 fans for an average of 2,311 per game. Throw in five non-league games, an exhibition game and three playoff games and the total is 79,737. . . . Swanson, a long-time newspaper man before his life-long love affair with baseball took him to Victoria, is the HarbourCats’ managing partner and general manager.

It is embarrassing the way Canada’s two sports networks treat MLB fans . . .

On Monday night, TSN scheduled a doubleheader, with the second game to have started three hours after the first one began. Unfortunately for fans, both were ESPN games and ESPN telecasts never end in less than three hours. . . . Of course, TSN does have a bunch of channels — five of them in my house — so when the first game runs late you are free to wonder why the second game doesn’t start on another channel, like maybe the one that was showing Sports Centre? . . . Sorry, but I didn’t hang around for Yankees and Mariners, the second game, on Monday night. Instead, it was over to the Diamondbacks and Giants with Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, two broadcasters who get it right.

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One night later, it was Sportsnet’s turn. On this night, Yankees and Mariners were joined in progress at 8:05 p.m. PT, about an hour after the game had started. . . . There are eight Sportsnet channels on my package — the World Poker Tour was on two of them, Highlights of the Night was on one and Sportsnet Central was on five. . . . No sense treating baseball fans with a modicum of respect and putting the Yankees and Mariners on one of those eight channels at 7 p.m. PT. . . . On top of all that, Sportsnet showed Yankees-Mariners highlights before joining the game in progress at 8:05 p.m., with the New Yorkers leading, 5-0, in the top of the third. . . . Hey, Sporstnet, thanks for the poke in the eye. . . . Hey, Sportsnet, I went back to Twins at White Sox, then to Diamondbacks at Giants.

treadmill

ICYMI, Sportsnet dumped Nick Kypreos, John Shannon and Doug MacLean from its NHL coverage this week. Don’t worry, though, because Don Cherry still is there, as is Brian Burke. . . . Daren Millard, who was shown the door by Sportsnet last August, was named to the Vegas Golden Knights’ TV team on Thursday.

ICYMI Part 2 . . . Stu MacGregor, who lost his job as the Kamloops Blazers’ general manager after the WHL’s 2018-19 season, now is the Victoria Royals’ western senior regional scout. Tom Gaglardi, the Blazers’ majority owner, dumped MacGregor in a major reshuffling of deck chairs, and added him to the scouting staff of the NHL’s Dallas Stars, his other toy, er, team. . . . MacGregor lasted one season with the Stars before moving on down the road.

Another WHL note . . . Each August, Alan Caldwell compiles, or attempts to compile, training camp rosters, puts them on spreadsheets, and makes them available to fans. On top of that, he adds and deletes as teams make player moves. . . . After the Kelowna Rockets informed him earlier this week that they wouldn’t be making a roster available, someone in the Little Apple took photos of a roster— it included last names only — that was posted in the arena and got them to Caldwell. He then was able to put together the Rockets roster that is right here. . . . The surprising thing about all of this is that there was someone in the arena in Kelowna who apparently isn’t part of Bruce Hamilton’s choir.

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Why would a WHL team choose not to release a training camp roster? Other than shortsightedness, who knows? . . . There was a time, more than 20 years ago, when WHL teams sometimes had players in camp under assumed names — hello, Bob Bell! hey there, Connor McRae! — supposedly to allow said players to try to protect their NCAA eligibility. Those days are over, though, so who knows what they’re afraid of in Kelowna? . . . It is interesting, though, that the WHL has established standards for the arenas in which its teams play — resulting in some cities having to purchase and install new boards, glass and score clocks with video boards — but doesn’t have any standards for something as simple as the releasing of training camp rosters.

Hey, Regina . . . Do the math: 910 x $280 is a lot of dough. My wife, Dorothy, had a kidney transplant on Sept. 23, 2013. She is getting ready to take part in her sixth Kidney Walk. Had each of you donated $100 to support her — you can do so right here — you would have saved yourself a lot of money and gotten an income tax receipt. . . . BTW, when did Reginans become wealthy enough to throw away money in this fashion? . . . I wonder if Regina’s distracted drivers are aware that there isn’t a prize for No. 1,000?