Teeth

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

Alberta writer Fred Stenson has fashioned a series of nine hockey
stories (five previously published) into an engaging collection
featuring mild-mannered Doug Burns, a centre on the NHL Bisons, a
franchise in a nameless Western Canadian city. While Stenson endows his
hero with some goal-scoring talent, Doug is far better known for his
hatred of any kind of physical contact on the ice. He has perfect teeth
as a result of this aversion, and wears “every piece of protective
hockey gear manufacturers make and money can buy.” That he plays at
all is the result of his parents’ desire for a “big, mean pro hockey
player who would wish them toothless Happy Birthdays during Hockey Night
in Canada intermissions of their autumn years.”

Stenson has a fine sense of comedic understatement. In “The Hockey
Widow,” Burns is brought home by an exasperated woman whose boorish
husband has gone one step too far. In “Colourful,” one of the
funniest stories, Burns is doing the colour commentary for a Bisons game
and must fill in as emergency play-by-play man. This entertaining
collection is recommended for public libraries.