The Memorial Cup

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.

Covering the period from 1919 through 1997, this book provides a
year-by-year history of the national championship playoffs of Canadian
junior hockey. The winning team receives the Memorial Cup, a trophy
created to commemorate those who died during World War I.

Before dealing with the annual contests, the authors introduce each
10-year period with some general comments about the various changes that
occurred in Canadian junior hockey during that time span. The entry for
each year succinctly describes the individual games of the championship
series and often recounts the playoff routes that the teams followed in
getting to the championship round. The text is enlivened by anecdotes,
bits of trivia, and direct quotations. At the end of each entry, the
authors identify which junior players, managers, and coaches went on to
have careers in professional hockey, especially in the NHL.

All of the entries are accompanied by black-and-white photos (usually
team pictures of the championship squad, although there are some of
individual players). Unfortunately, the team portraits are frequently
too small to allow readers to identify players; in some cases,
identification is impossible because the photos lack captions. A 25-page
closing section, “Records & Rosters,” provides various statistics
and lists. The 22-page index consists solely of proper names.

This popular (as opposed to scholarly) history lacks both a
bibliography and citations for the majority of its direct quotes.
Nonetheless, it still has a place in academic libraries as well as in
public libraries that serve devoted fans of amateur hockey.