Now You Know Hockey.

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.

Although the title suggests that Now You Know Hockey may be a primer for newcomers to the sport of hockey, it is actually a response to hockey fans’ seemingly insatiable desire for yet more trivia. While information about the National Hockey League, its teams, and its players predominates, Lennox’s work does consider hockey in other contexts.

The titled entries in the main text vary in length from brief paragraphs to full pages, and they are divided into nine sections, including the game’s history, culture, lingo, firsts and record breakers, star players, hockey’s high and low moments, as well as Olympic and world hockey. Women in hockey are included, but this section is the book’s shortest. The final and longest section, “Champions and Scoundrels,” is padded with soon-to-be dated lists of the winning teams of various championships, like the Memorial Cup. The book includes sidebars such as “Quickies” and lists. The “Quickies: Did you know …” boxes provide information tidbits such as the name of the first NHL player of Asiatic descent and the definition of a Gordie Howe hat trick. The various lists include “Ten Hockey Players Who Went Wrong” and “Nine Types of Passes in Hockey.”

Despite the number of existing books of this sort, Lennox has, nevertheless, unearthed novel trivia, including the disposition of the Original Six’s hockey arenas. Recommended.