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Short Shelf of Fine Hockey Fiction

Boxing has Fat City (Leonard Gardner) and The Harder They Fall (Budd Schulberg), football has North Dallas Forty (Peter Gent), and baseball has The Natural (Bernard Malamud) and Shoeless Joe (W.P. Kinsella), but hockey is still waiting for its truly great lyric writer. There have been a few pretty good novels and one play, though.

• Les Canadiens by Rick Salutin and Ken Dryden (1977).

• The Last Season by Roy MacGregor (1983).

• Hockey Night in the Dominion of Canada by Eric Zweig (1992).

• King Leary by Paul Quarrington (1994).

• Salvage King, Ya! A Herky-Jerky Picaresque by Mark Anthony Jarman (1997).

• Understanding Ken by Pete McCormack (1998).

• Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway (2000).

What is the best children’s story ever written about hockey?

In 1979 noted Quebec novelist and playwright Roch Carrier first published the short story “Une abominable feuille d’érable sur la glace” (“An Abominable Maple Leaf on the Ice”), now better known as “The Hockey Sweater” in English and “Le chandail de hockey” in French. Carrier based the story on his own experiences as a child. The narrative is simple but superb in the way it gets to the heart of the mystique of hockey for Canadians, particularly children. In the 1940s a boy’s hockey sweater wears out and his mother orders a new one from the Eaton’s catalogue. The boy is a rabid fan of the Montreal Cana-diens Rocket” Richard. However, when the new sweater and their star forward Maurice “Rocket” Richard. However, when the new sweater finally arrives, to the boy’s horror it’s a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater, not a Habs one. The boy tries to get his mother to return the sweater, but she feels that Mr. Eaton, obviously a Leafs fan, might be offended, so she insists he wear the despicable Leafs garment to his hockey game. As expected, the boy is the only one not wearing a Canadiens jersey. “The Hockey Sweater” is often thought to be an allegory for French and English tensions in Canada. It has been published in many forms, including a picture book for younger children. In 1980 an animated version, The Sweater, was released by Canada’s National Film Board to much acclaim.