Coffee Table Book of: Ice Hockey (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Ice Hockey is a large-format coffee table book of ice hockey, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: the puck, the stick and the skate, the rink, the goal and the goaltender, pond hockey on outdoor ice, the old stick and ball games, and play seen from far off.

It opens with the puck: a black puck on fresh white ice in the early morning, an early square slab of rubber beside a wooden disc and a puck sliding across snow-dusted lake ice.

Then skates: old leather skates hanging from a nail on a barn wall, a skate cut from a horse’s leg bone and a steel blade beside a curl of ice shaving.

Then the goal and the goaltender: a red goal with a white net, the peg that holds a post to the ice, old leather leg pads, a catching glove and blocker, a plain white mask with a wire cage and a goaltender crouched before the net.

Then pond hockey and outdoor ice: a rink cleared on a frozen lake at dawn, sticks lying crossed in a heap to pick sides, two blocks of snow as goalposts, a low pond goal at dusk, a rink on a frozen river and a puck on clear black ice with frozen bubbles.

Then the older games: a shinty stick and ball on heather, a hurley against a dry-stone wall, an orange ball and a bandy stick on a vast frozen field and a wooden disc on old indoor ice.

Then play seen from far off, the players small and anonymous: skaters chasing a puck on a lake at sunset, a faceoff from high above, a slap shot against a winter sky, a village rink at night and a lone skater on a frozen waterway at dawn.

Toward the end, northern ice: a rink on the prairie beside a farm hut at sunset, a rink below alpine peaks, a bandy field on a lake among birches, a rink in a city park at night, an empty goal on a vast lake in falling snow, an old wooden rink building at dusk and a warming hut with a glowing window.

Short notes run through the book. They are about the game, its puck, stick, skates, rink, rules, words and history rather than about the pictures: the rinks of the 1840s that used a smelly mixture of hog’s lard and salts in place of real ice, the cut from nine players a side to seven in 1880, the rover, a seventh player who roamed the ice at will until the position was dropped, and the manufactured sticks and shin pads that had arrived by 1900.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.