2000-2001 Hockey Superstars

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Here’s a pair of books that are guaranteed to knock the long, woolly
socks off hockey fans of nearly any age. Hockey Superstars features the
hottest hockey names in the 2000–01 season. Pavel Bure, Anson Carter,
Peter Forsberg, Scott Gomez, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Kariya, Olaf Kolzig,
John LeClair, Nicklas Lidstrom, Owen Nolan, Wade Redden, and Mats Sundin
are some of the featured players. At the back of the book are several
pages in a fill-in-the-blank format to enable readers to record hockey
history as it is being made.

Tough Guys of Hockey is not a book about goons on ice. Rather, it is
about players who overcame major challenges to play professional hockey.
Some of the featured players include Mario Lemieux, who overcame
Hodgkin’s disease to make a professional hockey comeback; Bobby Baun,
who played two games in the Stanley Cup finals (and scored the winning
goal in one) with a broken leg; Bobby Clarke, a diabetic, who took the
Philadelphia Flyers to two Stanley Cup championships; and Willie
O’Ree, who, as the first black player in the NHL, had to endure racism
from both players and fans to pursue his career dream.

Both books, which are written by Paul Romanuk, a professional
sportscaster, feature one-page chapters faced off with full-page color
photographs designed to look like super-sized hockey cards. Although
written for intermediate and advanced readers, these books will appeal
to adult sports fans as well. Highly recommended.