Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey

by Thomas J. Whalen

Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Bruins' 1970 Stanley Cup championship season by reliving all the moments in Kooks and Degenerates on Ice. While the United States seethed from racial violence, war, and mass shootings, the 1969-70 "Big, Bad Bruins," led by the legendary Bobby Orr, brushed off their perennial losing ways to defeat the St. Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup Finals for their first championship in 29 years. In Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey, Thomas J. Whalen recounts all the memorable moments from that championship season. Behind the no-nonsense yet inspired leadership of head coach Harry Sinden, the once laughingstock Bruins became the talk of the sporting world. Nicknamed the "Big, Bad Bruins" for their propensity to out-brawl and intimidate their opponents, the team rallied around the otherworldly play of Bobby Orr and his hard-hitting teammates to take the NHL by surprise in a season to remember. Kooks and Degenerates on Ice brings to life all the colorful personalities and iconic players from this Stanley Cup-raising team. In addition, the season is placed into its historical context as the United States struggled with issues of war, race, politics, and class, making this a must-read for sports enthusiasts, hockey fans, and those interested in twentieth-century American history.

Genres: Hockey, Nonfiction, Sports, History

240 pages, Hardcover

Published May 13, 2020

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

On May 10, 1970 Bobby Orr scored the game winning goal in game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, giving his Boston Bruins a series sweep over the St. Louis Blues and the Stanley Cup championship. Immediately after he shot the puck, he was tripped by a Blues defender, sending him airborne and creating one of the most famous photographs in sport history. The story of Orr, that team and the road to their championship is remembered in this book by Thomas J. Whalen.

This book has all the elements that are typical for a book about a championship team or season: there are game recaps, especially for the playoffs and all four games of the Finals. There are plenty of stories about players for the team featured. In this case, among the prominent Bruins from that club discussed are Orr, Phil Esposito, Derek Sanderson and Gerry Cheevers. Something that isn’t usually included in this type of book is player profiles from other teams. Whalen included profiles of such personalities as Glenn Hall and Bobby Hull, goaltender for the Blues and forward for the Chicago Blackhawks respectively. There is also a final look at the Bruins and the key players after that championship season.

All of these sections make for easy, entertaining reading. It does feel a bit choppy when describing the actual 1969-70 season as that is where many of the player profiles are placed in a random manner. Before this, there was much text about the social and political situation of 1970 along with a brief history of the Boston Bruins. This was good information that took about 25% of the book, but reading through this was worth the time, especially the Bruins history. That sets the tone for the wild season in which, in the words of Eddie Johnston, “a bunch of kooks and degenerates who get along” won the Stanley Cup.

Hockey fans will enjoy this book, especially Bruins fans, as a colorful team won one of the most prized trophies in sports with an iconic photo to capture the championship moment. The 50th anniversary of this team is remembered well in this book.

I wish to thank Rowman and Littlefield for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am often intrigued by books that have a tight time focus, in part because a major part of my academic work focuses on less than two months. That is to say, I often read to consider how authors deal with brevity. In my case, I am dealing with a multi-faceted, dispersed series of events whereas in studies such as this dealing with not just a tight time frame but also a very narrow set of action, my interest is piqued even more.

Thomas Whalen’s tale of the 1970 Stanley Cup championship has all the elements of a cracking yarn. There is the redemption of a team after years of failure; there are strong personalities and high achievers; there is an unsettled context where the USA in 1970 was a place of cultural and social challenge. He also has an engaging style – the narrative moves along well – and a great sense of the national and socio-cultural context, and yet somehow it doesn’t come together.

There are many strengths to the book. Whalen has a rich biographical sense of the key figures and weaves this through the book, introducing them and laying out their stories, in places developing key rivalries (the brothers on opposing Championship teams, for instance). He also build the background to the condition of the Bruins in the late 1960s very well. Added to this he has a powerful sense the team’s season and the path to victory as well as the way the 1970 Championship set the team up for subsequent years. When this is woven together with his ability to paint a picture of 1970 – mind you, it was a dramatic year with the Apollo 13 crisis, the massacre at Kent State, the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the break-up of the Beatles – and the richness of his evidence base this should be enough to make a significant book…. but, still, somehow it doesn’t come together.

The book is let down by two things. The first might be a product of overexcited marketing, but there is little here that suggests that this championship or team “transformed hockey”. The team comes across as a collection of high quality players who connect well to be extremely effective, but that’s not transformative. The second is a surprising aspect of context, in that there is not much of Boston in the book, given that it is a book about a Boston-based team. There is some comparative comment from time to time, such as the relative status of hockey in Boston and Philadelphia, but how and why this team mattered at this time in this place seems an important aspect of such a tightly focused study – that is a single team in a single season.

So as engaging as this is, I’m left with the sense it is a book for those in the know, and I can’t help wondering is Whalen has finished up cutting conceptual and analytical material in an effort (editorially driven?) to reach a wider audience.

[Woody Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have liked to have been able to award it 4.5 stars, but such capability does not currently exist on this site.

I am not, have not been, nor will ever be a BOS sports fan. In fact, I love to heckle the BOS teams & their fans whenever possible.

That said, this was a heckuva read! I got it as an inter-library loan (ILL) book with a short, finite period in which to read it & have it returned without severe penalties. I rose to the task and dedicated all of my reading time to it, running through it in fairly short order.

One of my bugaboos with it was its first chapter, "1970", which seemed out of order in the grand scheme of the book. It should have been chapter 2, following "Hub of Hockey", which would have laid the foundation for the setting (time & place) while leading into a greater exploration of time before the greater exposition of the team and its championship.

Another was the placement of the Gerry Cheevers photo on page 168 when it should have been on page 174. A minor slight, but it was irksome.

This book was the companion piece to the NHL Network special "Big, Bad & Bobby" and should be read & watched simultaneously.

[Zandt McCue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hate the Bruins. This will also be about ice cream.

As a sports fan of any sport, you find a team you love and everyone else is dead to you. Not that intensely but rivalries exists. The breakdown of the divisions in Hockey enables us to have multiple sets of rivals who we love to hate. I'm a Penguins fan. The Flyers and the Capitals are teams I will always root the worst for. I don't care if they have some great players. That's not how sports work.

You may be wondering then why I would be against the Bruins. They are no longer in the same division as the Penguins. I'm originally from Long Island. The Islanders were the hometown team but they haven't been good since the Eighties. When I was growing up the Rangers were the team New York cared about. I was brought into Hockey by a Devils fan. This is all very misleading, I understand. My point is even if I'm not a Hockey rival of the Bruins, as a person from New York I have been engineered to automatically think negative thoughts about all things Boston.

Also, when the Dropkick Murphys in their song Rose Tattoo sing the line "Black and Gold we wave the flag" I will always attribute that to the Penguins even though I know for a fact it is about the Bruins. You wore it first. We wear it better. Yours is also more yellow.

Why then would I choose to spend hours reading a book about a team I don't like? I love Hockey. I can spend many more paragraphs detailing what Hockey means to me but that will detract from the fact I'm here to talk about Kooks and Degenerates on Ice.

Reading this was similar to someone offering me Ice Cream. Let's say I told them that I was in the mood for chocolate but then was fed multiple bowls of vanilla. Over and over until I'm bursting. It's not what I wanted 100% but it was worth every single spoonful. Because what Thomas Whalen does here is not to simply tell you the story of one season of the Bruins but the story of Hockey itself. The history of the Bruins is the history of the NHL. Yes, the focal point of this book will bring us to the 1969-1970 Stanley Cup-winning season. It doesn't end there. It doesn't even start there.

I'm a sucker for exposition. Thomas starts the book by letting us know what was going on in the world which was great because I didn't come around until eighteen years afterward. Nixon as president is trying to pull us out of Vietnam. Ted Kennedy crashed his car into a lake which caused his passenger to drown and was a major scandal but not enough to do lasting damage to his reputation because he is a Kennedy. The Apollo 13 Incident occurred during this time. Muhammed Ali loses his titles and right to fight for refusing to be drafted to Vietnam on the grounds of religious beliefs. There are more movies, music, and sports references.

The book, while being focussed on the 1970's team, has a habit of jumping around. While talking about players we learn everything about them. Where they are from, who they used to play for growing up, what their relatives thought about their talent. It's very informative and for people who like to do deep dives for facts they can tell others while drinking at sports bars, this is perfect. I may not be a Bruins fan but I have a ton of respect for the great revered players of the game. Many of them happen to have played for the Bruins. Who hasn't heard of Bobby Orr, Derek Sanderson, or Phil Esposito? These are people that modern players are being compared to. Art Ross was the first coach and eventually the long time General Manager of the team. Art Ross! As in the Art Ross Trophy.

I've been following Hockey since 2000. I've never been a major sports fan. I flirt with other sports but none give me the emotions that I get while watching Hockey. Something about it clicked with me. There is much I still have to learn about the sport. I'm not completely out of the loop but I didn't know the significance of who Art Ross actually was aside from a great player. Same with the others. To me, they were names. Statistics to be beaten. What was great about Whalen's book is that it felt like I was there watching these players reach the level of greatness that we know see them as. By learning their trials, tribulations, injuries, and anecdotes I feel personally connected to this team. I wanted them to win that cup. Their battle became my battle. When all the pieces fell into place it was like magic on ice.

One thing in the book which I noticed was that we would start to follow a player in the current time period then jump into their past and how they ended up on the Bruins. Then towards the ends of the chapters, they go even further into the future. Sometimes far into the future. The main time frame in this book is the lead up to that 1970's cup win but also the immediate years before and after. By throwing us some information about the late Eighties, Nineties, even the early Naughts I found myself doing some double-takes. These moments of information seem rushed, and disappear quickly among the flow the rest of our story takes.

The acceptable what-happened-after does come after the cup win and we watch the team deteriorate in the years after. Trades, a rival league, health issues, and financial grievances lead our heroes their separate ways. Many find their ways back to the Bruins in one role or another. Other fresher talent also fills in the gaps but it is obvious the great Big Bad Bruin team cannot be replaced.

This was a great book. I enjoyed learning about the players, coaches, and the history of the league. Thomas Whalen also did something I would not expect. He made me respect the Bruins.

[Randal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good sports books are rare. Good hockey books almost non-existent, so I had my hopes up for this one.

But I'm pretty sure I read this exact book in 1971. Oh wait, that was a rush-to-print book in the wake of the Bruins' championship called Goaltender by Gerry Cheevers. He and Tony Esposito were my favorite goalies at the time and as I was a pee-wee netminder, also my heroes. That book lived on my bedside table for a decade, even though it was such a miserable thing that Cheevers' publisher called 2019's Unmasked his "first ever autobiography."

But I digress ... back to this one ... The Bruins of the early '70s are one of the legendary teams of hockey, as much for their wild carousing as their play (which in part explains why a team with so much talent didn't win more). So given the title, I was expecting something beyond a run-of-the-mill team profile. But that's exactly what this is: Profiles of the players, coach, executives and some of the opposition. A history of the team, how it was put together and how it came unraveled.
Also, bizarrely, the first chapter is a thumbnail history of 1970. The writing / editing in general is not great. Then there's a chapter-long homage to Eddie Shore, probably the most famous Bruin pre-Bobby Orr. It omits and / or forgives most of Shore's thuggery, which is a good indication that instead of really looking at the kooks & degenerates who were part of the 1970 Bruins, this is just going to buff up the legend a bit. (Whalen puts the title in parentheses in the copy but does not attribute it, which I thought more than a little odd.)

The standard format of team profile books is chronological, with asides to highlight details about individuals that lead back into the main structure of the book. In the hands of really good writers, there's a flow, a streamlined story so you barely notice the sidebar. Here and altogether too often in such sports writing, it's a clunky series of sort-of-connected set pieces.

It fails to make the case for how their championship transformed hockey (subtitle) because it didn't. The thing that transformed hockey of the era was Sam Pollock's management of the Montreal Canadiens. The NHL amateur draft was just coming of age, and Pollock was the first and best of his era at realizing how acquiring picks was the key to building a championship team. Score in the 1970s: Boston 2, Philly 2, Montreal 6. Pretty clear who was leading and who was following along. You can make a good case that Bobby Orr transformed hockey, but that was going to be the case no matter where he played. Orr made the Bruins, the Bruins did not make Orr.

So this is a book about a group of Boston heroes by a BU prof who writes regularly about how great Massachusetts is, not about hockey (his other titles ... the Celtics, the Red Sox, a couple of Kennedys). Which -- along with moneymaking prospect of the 50th anniversary of the Broonz Stanley Cup -- really explains why he thinks it's OK to trot out all the old, old stories in a new cover. Then there's the explanation he includes of why Boston really ought to be considered the "Hub of the Universe."

The next-to-last word on this one goes to Dan O'Shaughnessy, in the first of the snippet reviews on the back cover, where he says it is a book for "New England Baby Boomers who can never get enough of Bobby Orr and the Bruins of the 1970s," calling it "another for your collection." I would say "yet another," but that would seem harsh for a cover blurb. He damns with faint praise.

Subtract all the stars greater than one because on page 112, the author misspells Gordie Howe's name ("Gordy," I kid you not. In a hockey book). So the last word on this one is shame, shame, shame.

[Anne Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well researched book on the history of the Boston Bruins, using the 1970 Stanley Cup win and Bobby Orr's The Goal as its center. In a relaxed style of writing, Whalen gives readers the highlights of the development of this Original Six team, including some of the more outrageous moments both on and off the ice. The focus is the 1969-1970 Stanley Cup winning team and Whalen gives us brief biographies of many of the major players, behind the scenes stories of practical jokes played, drama unfolding, and management decisions many fans may not have known about. There are some great stories: Stan Mikita's accidental discovery of what a curved blade could do, violence and mayhem among fighters on the ice, the famous stitched goalie mask. It was an entertaining read, although I often found the set up of the book a little difficult to follow. While describing the 1969-70 playoff games, particularly the final, Whalen would go on tangents on particular players, giving their biographies and stories about them- most of which were interesting, but they interrupted the flow of the narrative until there was almost none left. It might have been better to set up the final by describing the season overall and getting those stories and biographies in then, then allowing the focus on the playoffs and its impact on the Bruins and Boston to stand on its own. But overall a good book, and one hockey fans will enjoy.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

[Jenn Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to round up from 3.5 to 4 on this one because of my personal enjoyment. I'm a big fan of the Bruins, not to mention of Boston and hockey in general. It was a great experience reading about events that I had previously known mostly through casual conversation with older folks. My issue is with the formatting/lack of sharp focus. Context is important, but the entire first chapter about the fine details of what was going on in 1970 and the second chapter about the history of the Bruins should have been condensed into a prologue, leaving more room in the body for the specific topic this book is meant to address. When chapter 7 closed with the very recent Bruins past, it felt strange that the "where are they now" style bit that followed was marked as simply another chapter instead of as an epilogue.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Pam Koenig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took so long to read because I read other genres in-between. Brought back a lot of memories from days when I first started going to games.