The Best Game You Can Name

A friend who knows I play and love hockey got this for me as a Christmas gift. I read it on a flight and surely raised a few eyebrows as I laughed out loud many times. By combining his personal experience in playing rec league hockey with his background as a musician, Bidini created a book that spoke to two of my great interests without ever getting bogged down in one over the other. This particular book also includes anecdotes from actual NHLers (covering a range of eras) that relate to the stories Bidini tells. Well written and endlessly amusing. I liked it so much I bought it for two of my friends.

OK- I read Tropic of Hockey back when it came out and loved it. So, in describing why I have waited nearly two years from the time "The Best Game You Can Name" was published to get around to reading it, I can only summon the images from Cameron Crowe's masterpiece "Singles" when Campbell Scott's character Steve greets the long-awaited Kyra Sedgwick with, "What took you so long?" Well, I can only plead the fifth on that, but I LOVE this book. Bidini's style is easy to enjoy- his words flow, coming from the heart, and he weaves a good deal of musical and cultural references througout. But it's the hockey- oh, the HOCKEY that keeps you on target and turning every page without slowing down. Bidini deftly navigates between anecdotes from his own Toronto Morningstars amateur club to the first-person accounts of former NHLers who speak openly and candidly of their playing days and experiences. This is a rich narrative- some of Bidini's talking points and references will be lost on more than a few, but when he gets down to the brass tacks: the hockey- he's definitely on his A-game. There are so many outstanding stories told here, and they keep getting better as the book goes on. I loved former Boston Bruin Walt McKechnie's tale of a young rookie named Dave "Tiger" Williams literally fighting to make a Toronto team and Maple Leaf great Darryl Sittler's warning to McKechnie, which he thought nothing of until Williams blackened one of Terry O'Reilly's eyes. "Gee, Taz-" says McKechnie sitting in the dressing room between periods. "Sittler said that the kid had gotten in a fight per game since the preseason started." Replies O'Reilly: "He'll have two tonight." That's just magic. As a die-hard B's fan growing up near Boston and worshiping O'Reilly and his Big, Bad Bruins (Al Secord was my first REAL hockey hero), these are the stories I never got enough of when I thirsted for whatever information I could get my hands on, and eagerly awaited every issue of The Hockey News. Bravo, Dave- this is a GREAT book. And it is my honor to accord this work with a 5-Star rating that is well-deserved. This is must-reading for any true hockey fan...you'll want to go out and lace up the skates immediately after reading just one chapter. Unfortunately for me- that will have to wait, but rest assured. When I return stateside and get back out on the ice, I'll be thanking Dave Bidini for helping bring some of my passion for hockey back. Baghdad 02-06-08

The Best Game You Can Name I love all of Dave's books, and this one doesn't disappoint. The fun details about his musicians' league hockey tournament are interspersed with great anecdotes from NHL players about their good coaches, their crappy coaches, their good teammates, their lousy ones, the practical jokes they played on roommates... All in all, just a good enjoyable read. Since I'm a recent NHL fan, it was nice getting caught up on hockey dirt from the non-internet earlier years. I'll bet that if you buy it, you won't be disappointed in the slightest. So, go, what are you waiting for, click on the book and have it shipped to your home overnight.