Offside: Hockey from the Inside

Janet Money is a writer and policy analyst for the Canadian Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation in Toronto.

The subtitle of this book should have been “Hockey from Stan Fischler’s Side,” since much of it is devoted to descriptions of arguments between Fischler and various players, coaches, and managers.

Again and again, Fischler, a self-described hockey gossip, describes lampooning someone in print or on the air, having his target react negatively, and having the grudge dissolve years later.

Anyone who believes pro hockey players and management are pure at heart and never read the newspapers will indeed find this book a description, as the jacket claims, of “the darker side of professional hockey.” But realistic hockey followers will find nothing surprising in Offside, the latest of several books Fischler has written in a long career of covering the pro game.

The lengthy accounts of his running feuds with Denis Potvin, Bobby Clarke, Wayne Gretzky, Alan Eagleson, and others become tiring in time. But Fischler has more to say in this rambling volume, itemizing what he feels are the game’s problems (it’s too fast, it should be a five-man game, the officiating is incompetent, etc.) and offering what he feels are solutions.

This book will be of mild interest to the pro hockey follower, but it has no central justification for being written at all. It is neither a polemic on the game nor entirely an expose, but a little of both.

In the epilogue, Fischler, musing on players’ reactions to his work, notes that it’s impossible to please everybody in hockey reporting. Hardly an inspired conclusion, but it applies likewise to his book-writing.