I have a new project for myself: reading hockey books. I no longer remember how exactly I thought of starting this project, but I think it probably had to do with the fact that I’ve been listening to The Tragically Hip a lot lately, which got me thinking about songs that reference hockey. From there, I started wondering about books — specifically novels, because I’m not a great reader of non-fiction — that involve the best game you can name in some way. I first thought of Roch Carrier’s excellent picture book The Hockey Sweater (and the great National Film Board animated version of it), and then remembered a novel I’d read while doing my first English degree called Black Madonna, by F.G. Paci. Though that one isn’t technically about hockey, one of the main characters plays hockey, and the game is used in the book as a metaphor for Canadianness, eh?

I started browsing around websites looking for more and found that there are quite a few works of fiction and poetry about the game. I stumbled upon Paul Martin’s blog (Not that Paul Martin. No, not that Paul Martin either.), which led me to the Canadian Lit website Northwest Passages’ Hockey Lit section. I was intrigued. Since I am, at the moment, working at an institution which holds at least two copies of every single book ever published by a Canadian writer or about a Canadian subject, and am also armed with a library card which allows me to borrow any book my heart desires from said massive collection, this seemed like an ideal moment to start investigating further.

So today at lunch I did a keyword search for “hockey” in the library catalogue and came up with almost 3000 results. When I copied my search results into Word, it made a document of 272 pages that crashed the program when I tried to edit it. (I thought about printing it, but we have a communal printer and I think other people might have documents they’d like to print off sometime this week.) They really do have everything here — from every single edition of Ken Dryden’s The Game ever published to guides to buying hockey equipment, manuals about getting your certification as a referee in the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and cookbooks published by NHL teams in the 1980s (Flaming Foods: A Cookbook of Enjoyable Recipes By Your Calgary Flames Families). It’s kind of awesome.

Before I raid the library’s holdings, I’m going to get this project started with King Leary by Paul Quarrington, which I bought a long time ago (I have a tendency to buy a book and then not read it for about three years) and had brought home with me to read over the summer. I will try to keep reading, and will post my thoughts on the books I read here. Eventually, I hope to build a list of hockey fiction, which can serve as a resource to hockey fanatics, and help to fan the flames of hockey obsession during the offseason.

Though I haven’t posted about it, I’ve been watching all Canada’s games at the World Championships in Halifax and Quebec City. Unfortunately, Canada ended up losing the gold medal in overtime today. Very disappointing. You could see it coming, though. They didn’t play well in the third period — they blew a two goal lead — and yeah. It just wasn’t meant to be. The Sens’ own Dany Heatley won the tournament MVP award (of course), but he posed for one picture with the trophy and then just handed it to someone on the bench and skated away. It was really sad. Such a great tournament for the team and then to have it end that way.

Despite the loss, it was a really entertaining tournament, particularly due to the awesome play of Heatley and his linemates, Ryan Getzlaf and Rick Nash. Individually, these guys are all great players: they have size, strength, skill, and the ability to score. Combine them, and you get the Heatzlash, an unstoppable all-Canadian entity that terrifies the living daylights out of other countries’ defencemen and goaltenders.

I have heard a few Sens fans being a bit critical of Heatley for his awesome World Championship performance. “Who is this guy wearing #15 for Canada?” “Where was he when the Sens were in the playoffs?” I understand where this comes from, and to be honest I was irritated at Heatzza for signing on to play for Team Canada when it seemed they were both exhausted by the end of the Sens’ season. But in the end I’ve had to conclude that seeing those two pick up more “big game” experience can’t be bad, and should benefit the Sens in the long run. Spezza, in particular, should have gained a lot from playing on the fourth line in this tournament. He was praised in the media for the way he handled his reduced role, and appeared to adjust his game fairly well as the tournament progressed. If any of it stays with him, it’s going to be a boon to the Sens’ organization.

As for the people criticizing Heatley, well, I’d just like to remind them that a player fitting his description scored 141 goals for Ottawa over the last three seasons and led the NHL in playoff scoring (along with Alfie and, oh yes, Spezza) in 2007. There’s no argument that either of these guys performed well in this year’s series against Pittsburgh, but the entire team had fallen apart. I hardly think blame for the loss can be pinned on them and them alone. By the end of the Sens’ year, everyone seemed miserable. If playing in this tournament helped Heatley and Spezza rediscover the joy of hockey, then I’m all for it.

Aside from potential future benefits to the Sens, the other great thing to take from this tournament is that Canada’s 2010 Olympic team should be really, really freaking amazing. This was an excellent Canadian squad, and when you think about some of the people who weren’t there — Crosby, Iginla, Lecavalier, Thornton, Phaneuf, Luongo, Brodeur — it’s hard not to get very excited about the possibilities for 2010.

I also got to learn more about some players I wasn’t overly familiar with before, like Brent Burns and Mike Green and Dan Hamhuis and Duncan Keith, all of whom were impressive (I especially liked Burns and Green), and I got to watch The Amazing Rick Nash several games in a row, and I realized that Ryan Getzlaf is actually not so bad. Slightly bitter about that one because I do try to keep my level of Ducks-hatred as high as possible, but I suppose I can get away with liking one player on the team. Maybe the super high intensity of my hatred for Pronger balances it out.

After the gold medal game ended, I switched over to the Pittsburgh-Philadelphia game. The Penguins won the series today. The Sens are officially no longer Eastern Conference Champions. And the Penguins are going to the Cup Final. HOW WONDERFUL. FEEL MY JOY. WHOOP DEE BLOODY DOO.