That Old Gang of Mine

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The Canadian Olympic Hockey Team has been wiped out in a tragic plane crash, and the Moscow Olympics is just six weeks away. A mourning nation feels a double blow: the death of its promising young athletes and the destruction of its hopes for the prized Olympic gold, so long lost to the Russians.

One man, not-so-very-young Pete Gordon, executive assistant to the Minister for Sport and Recreation, refuses to despair. From his own high school past he assembles a team of “nobodies” (an artist, a druggist, an Indian activist, etc., most of them once promising hockey players on the school team, none of them turned pro) and offers “Team Nobody” as an eleventh hour replacement for the lost Olympic team.

It’s a mad scheme, but the only hope. This rollicking fairy tale of a dream come true follows Team Nobody in its desperate venture, from its first tension-breaking pratfalls for the press, all the way to the final battle for the gold medal. Loosely connected to the author’s juvenile title Scrubs on Skates, That Old Gang of Mine is entirely adult, ranging from bedroom farce to mayhem on the ice. Lots of fun and lots of games.