Guts and Go: Great Saskatchewan Hockey Stories

Liz Dennett is a public service librarian in the Science and Technology
Library at the University of Alberta.

“Great” may be a bit of an overstatement for these 32 stories of
Saskatchewan hockey lore. While the achievements of some of Canada’s
best athletes are undeniably great, the stories fail to be particularly
memorable and by the end of the book all of the names, teams,
championships, leagues, and playing statistics jumble together in
memory. Daniels has, however, selected a nice variety of subjects to
write about, from Hayley Wickenheiser and team winning the gold at the
Salt Lake City Olympics; to the Regina Silver Foxes, who lost 58
straight games before finally winning; to a variety of NHL’ers such as
Tiger Williams, Wendel Clark, and more. The stories spread across many
age groups and different levels of abilities. Some focus on an
individual career, while others detail a team’s achievement.
Unfortunately, it is the commonalities between many of the stories that
make the book a bit dull: many of the players come from small towns,
have a dad or brother who played hockey before them, spent their
formative years playing hockey whenever they could, worked hard, left
home early, had great coaches who pushed them, put up some great
numbers, and played on teams that really pulled together. Obviously,
this is a successful hockey formula.

Guts and Go will appeal mainly to those involved in hockey in
Saskatchewan. Many names and teams come up repeatedly throughout the
book, and the addition of an index would have been very useful in order
to quickly make the links between the different stories.