The Last Hockey Game

by Bruce McDougall

Overview

Shortlisted, Toronto Book Awards

On May 2, 1967, Montreal and Toronto faced each other in a battle for hockey supremacy. This was only the fifth time the teams had ever played each other in the Stanley Cup finals. Toronto led the series 3-2.

But this wasn't simply a game. From the moment Foster Hewitt announced "Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States," the game became a turning point in sports history. That night, the Leafs would win the Cup. The next season, the National Hockey League would expand to twelve teams. Players would form an association to begin collective bargaining. Hockey would become big business. The NHL of the "Original Six" would be a thing of the past.

It was The Last Hockey Game.

Placing us in the announcers' booth, in the seats of excited fans, and in the skates of the players, Bruce McDougall scores with a spectacular account of every facet of that final fateful match. As we meet players such as Gump Worsley, Tim Horton, Terry Sawchuk, and Eddie Shack, as well as coaches, owners, and fans, The Last Hockey Game becomes more than a story of a game. It also becomes an elegy, a lament for an age when, for all its many problems, the game was played for the love of it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780864923783
Publisher:	Goose Lane Editions
Publication date:	10/28/2014
Pages:	370
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Bruce McDougall saw his first NHL game at Maple Leaf Gardens between the Canadiens and the Leafs in 1955. He is the author of sixteen books of non-fiction, including biographies of Ted Rogers and Edgar Bronfman Jr. His debut story collection, Every Minute is a Suicide was released in the fall of 2014.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Pre-game Warm-Up 11

Chapter 2 First Period 101

Chapter 3 First Intermission 133

Chapter 4 Second Period 165

Chapter 5 Second Intermission 205

Chapter 6 Third Period 235

Chapter 7 Post-game Wrap-up 309

Notes on Sources 343

Index 355

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Last Hockey Game is a bold, intimate, often brilliant feat of storytelling. Bruce McDougall takes a single game, a proverbial grain of sand, and spins it into a universe. The resulting energy illuminates not just the core, the solid centre, but the ragged outer edges of the game's greatest franchises, the Leafs and Canadiens, at the height of their greatness." — Charles Wilkins, award-winning author of Breakaway and Little Ship of Fools

"I saw this game, and I have to say that the book is even better. The Last Hockey Game has all he inside innocence, ego, snubbed cigars, honest scars and pro-gossip from the glory days when the NHL was about to lose its virginity." — Bill Gaston, author of Midnight Hockey and Juliet Was a Surprise

"It's about a game and its players, employees in a trade where even excellent work guaranteed nothing, least of all fair treatment, yet they played their hearts out, for the love of the game. But the question you'll ask yourself most often while reading The Last Hockey Game is: 'How did he find that out?'" — Jean-Patrice Martel, author of On the Origin of Hockey and former president, Society for International Hockey Research

Editorial Reviews

01/26/2015
The decisive sixth game of the 1967 Stanley Cup final between the victorious Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens provides the focal point for this vivid, well-researched analysis of the then-impending cultural and commercial transformation of the National Hockey League. Longtime Canadian business writer McDougall (Ted Rogers) implies nostalgia with his title but is unflinching in his depiction of the rigors of old-time hockey, embodied in Leafs goalie Terry Sawchuk’s habit of keeping and displaying his lost teeth and bone chips. Skillfully juxtaposed anecdotes illustrate the differences between the personalities of the Montreal and Toronto organizations, the standard-bearers for French Canada and English Canada respectively: pre-game, Montreal coach Toe Blake told his players to give their best, while Toronto coach Punch Imlach threw $1,000 on the dressing room floor and said, “This is what you’re playing for.” The league’s subsequent expansion from six teams to 12 and the creation of the NHL Players Association would make money more of a focus than ever. Primarily catering to hardcore hockey fans, McDougall occasionally goes overboard with details, like offering mathematical proof that the ‘67 Leafs had greater experience than the Canadiens. Yet he succeeds in showing how players loved the game in an era when it was all they had. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] vivid, well-researched analysis of the then-impending cultural and commercial transformation of the National Hockey League."

"Anecdotes, stories and clearly enunciated insights and analysis put The Last Hockey Game right up there on the shelf with Ken Dryden's The Game. There can be no question after reading this excellent addition to hockey's literary canon that our game isn't now and will never be the same as it was then."

"The Last Hockey Game is a bold, intimate, often brilliant feat of storytelling. Bruce McDougall takes a single game, a proverbial grain of sand, and spins it into a universe. The resulting energy illuminates not just the core, the solid centre, but the ragged outer edges of the game's greatest franchises, the Leafs and Canadiens, at the height of their greatness."

"I saw this game, and I have to say the book is even better. The Last Hockey Game has all the inside innocence, ego, snubbed cigars, honest scars and pro-gossip from the glory days when the NHL was about to lose its virginity."

"It's about a game and its players, employees in a trade where even excellent work guaranteed nothing, least of all fair treatment yet they played their hearts out, for the love of the game. But the question you'll ask yourself most often while reading The Last Hockey Game is: 'How did he find that out?'"

From the Publisher

"The Last Hockey Game is a bold, intimate, often brilliant feat of storytelling. Bruce McDougall takes a single game, a proverbial grain of sand, and spins it into a universe. The resulting energy illuminates not just the core, the solid centre, but the ragged outer edges of the game's greatest franchises, the Leafs and Canadiens, at the height of their greatness."

Charles Wilkins

"Anecdotes, stories and clearly enunciated insights and analysis put The Last Hockey Game right up there on the shelf with Ken Dryden's The Game. There can be no question after reading this excellent addition to hockey's literary canon that our game isn't now and will never be the same as it was then."

Winnipeg Free Press - Jim Millican

"I saw this game, and I have to say the book is even better. The Last Hockey Game has all the inside innocence, ego, snubbed cigars, honest scars and pro-gossip from the glory days when the NHL was about to lose its virginity."

Bill Gaston

"It's about a game and its players, employees in a trade where even excellent work guaranteed nothing, least of all fair treatment yet they played their hearts out, for the love of the game. But the question you'll ask yourself most often while reading The Last Hockey Game is: 'How did he find that out?'"

Jean-Patrice Martel

"I saw this game, and I have to say the book is even better. The Last Hockey Game has all the inside innocence, ego, snubbed cigars, honest scars and pro-gossip from the glory days when the NHL was about to lose its virginity."

author of Midnight Hockey and Juliet Was a Surpise Bill Gaston

"The Last Hockey Game is a bold, intimate, often brilliant feat of storytelling. Bruce McDougall takes a single game, a proverbial grain of sand, and spins it into a universe. The resulting energy illuminates not just the core, the solid centre, but the ragged outer edges of the game's greatest franchises, the Leafs and Canadiens, at the height of their greatness."

award-winning author of Breakaway and Little Ship Charles Wilkins