Hockey's Greatest Tragedies - The Broken Heroes of the Fastest Game on Earth

by Timothy Feige

Hockey's Greatest Tragedies is the first book to deal with the lives and struggles of the sport's most tragic figures, from the earliest days to the sad end of Bob Probert. And yet, within these stories, We also find the inspirational instances in which individuals and teams ---in this team sport--- have rallied to triumph over heartbreak and adversity.

Genres: Hockey

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It looks at players (and one former Maple Leafs Garden child sexual abuse victim) who died young, and a few who had other issues (like Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy). There's like 40 names in there, and he goes over each in a couple pages, then details what happened. A pretty depressing book of course, but still interesting to read. A little disappointed that Luc Bourdon was not included though; not sure why he wasn't.

What bothered me though was there were a few notable factual errors.Things like saying Theo Fleury was traded to the Colorado Rockies, the Canadiens winning their 33rd Cup in 1986, writing "Estivan" (it should be Estevan, and was indeed spelt correctly elsewhere), and a couple others. It is really disappointing to see so many issues like this, and you would hope an editor and fact-checker would catch them before publishing a book like this.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Untimely deaths. Drug addictions. Sexual abuse victims. Sometimes combinations of those. This is the uniting factor of the players (and one non-player, but associated with a team) selected for inclusion in Timothy Feige's "Hockey's Greatest Tragedies - The Broken Heroes of the Fastest Game on Earth".

The book, by its nature, focuses on unpleasant issues outside of the rink - disease, drugs, etc. - except in the case of Bill Masterton whose accident occurred on the ice. As such, very few of the biographical sketches that it contains have an uplifting ending - the ones that do involve winning a battle against drugs once the player's career is over, such as with Derek Sanderson. This gets depressing across an entire book!

Further, the stories contained are necessarily short in order to include information about as many people as possible. Entire seasons, and more, are condensed into lines like "he only played in 48 games for the Penguins that year, but managed 28 goals and 30 assists". However, the stories are well researched and I did learn some things, especially about players whose careers occurred before my time.

There were some omissions that I wish could have been included: George Pelewa, who lost list life in a car accident before he could begin his college career / report to the Calgary Flames who drafted him. Bryan Fogerty, who literally drank away a promising career - and life. and I'm sure others.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of biographical sketches of talented hockey players that met tragic ends. Most in the collection died before their fortieth birthday. The sketches are presented alphabetically and each ends with their record of statistics. There are several players from the early years (e.g. Ace Bailey, Joe Hall and Hobey Baker) as well as many from more recent times (e.g. Terry Sawchuck, Doug Harvey and Derek Sanderson).
The text provides an overview of some of the challenges presented to the early players, many of who often had no education and played for little money without insurance or pension plans, but simply for the love of the game.
An adequate overview of what happened to each player but little significant analysis of why they faltered.