Growing Up Hockey: The Life and Times of Everyone Who Ever Loved the Game.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Growing Up Hockey is one of those books which defies easy categorization. It’s obviously about hockey, and it is definitely autobiographical, but its author is not the typical current or past NHL star recounting his exploits. Instead, Kennedy admits that he was never more than a timid house-league third-line right winger, one who, largely because of the game’s roughness, “retired” three times from playing hockey. And yet, Kennedy’s Everyman writings will resonate with all those Canadian adults, especially males, who once dreamed of playing in the NHL despite the fact that their skill levels publicly evidenced how impossible that dream really was. The book’s contents are divided into three parts: “Learning the Game,” “Living the Game,” and “Loving the Game,” with the first section of 40 pages being the shortest and the middle section at 210 pages being almost twice as long as the closing portion. The book’s 61 chapters each bear a title, and the individual chapters could stand alone as separate, almost short story–like, reads. Growing up in Montreal, Kennedy was a devout Habs fan, and the team and its players feature strongly in the book’s first two sections. Although Kennedy is telling his own personal story about how his ongoing connections with hockey have influenced his life, his writing offers readers with numerous opportunities for self-recognition, such as in “Learning the Game” when Kennedy, the novice player, wanting to be like his professional heroes, desires a stick with a curved blade, but his father will only purchase the cheaper flat-bladed variety. Many of the chapters in “Living the Game” deal with collecting hockey cards and the various roles that these little pieces of cardboard played in youngsters’ lives, especially as a significant form of “social currency.” This section’s chapters also feature Kennedy’s stories about his youthful involvement in the game’s off-ice version, the neighborhood pickup games of road or street hockey, which had their own local rules and etiquette. The book’s final section, “Loving the Game,” follows the adult Kennedy as higher education and employment take him to largely non-hockey locations in North America, situations which challenge his ability to maintain his love of hockey. Recommended.