Hockey Night in the Dominion of Canada

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Sportswriter Zweig’s first novel is the story of the founding of the
National Hockey League at the turn of the century. He focuses chiefly on
a small group of players and owners; the Patrick brothers (Lester and
Frank), Edouard “Newsy” Lalonde, and Fred “Cyclone” Taylor are
the players; M.J. O’Brien and his son, Ambrose, of Renfrew, Ontario,
are the owners. Hockey Night in the Dominion of Canada imagines how
these men came together to form hockey’s first fully professional
club, the Renfrew Millionaires.

There are other characters, too, who are integral to a subplot Zweig
has woven into his story. Reaching further into Canadian history, he
pulls up the great Naval Debate of 1910, during which Prime Minister
Laurier introduced the concept of a small Canadian naval force under
British control. There is also the assassination of President William
McKinley by Leon Czolgosz, and a fictionalized attempt on the life of
Laurier.

While the two plots never quite mesh, and while the writing
(particularly the dialogue) is often stilted, Zweig throws enough hockey
action and intrigue into the mix to keep the pages turning.