Hockey Trivia: Quizzes, Games, Brain Teasers

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

Each successive season provides sports fans with oceans of statistics
and seas of important and trivial information. With expansion and the
proliferation of teams in most sports, the permutations and combinations
of facts and figures have advanced geometrically. In Hockey Trivia, Don
Weekes promises to provide the fan with “the most current and off-beat
trivia questions imaginable, working in brand-new statistical data and
oddball anecdotes while presenting hard-core facts and records that have
become standard in the game.” He has accomplished this in spades. With
Montreal Canadiens he succeeds as well, while specializing in the trivia
of one very successful hockey team.

Weekes uses a multiple-choice question format as the foundation for his
quiz books. Dividing each book into 10 chapters with a minimum of 15
questions for each section, he not only provides the correct answer, but
also gives detailed explanations of the answers. Diverse intermission
pieces—crossword puzzles (from conventional to circular to numerical),
matching questions (from signs in rinks and trash-talking quotes, to
expansion picks), and wordfind puzzles—provide variety for the reader,
much as the modern fan is entertained by various promotions between
periods. Even diehard hockey fans will be challenged by the wide array
of questions.

In Montreal Canadiens, the questions are more reverential and
traditional, as befits the long and illustrious history of this winning
franchise. There are matching questions on trades, sweater numbers,
major events, famous quotes, and game-winning goals, and wordfind
puzzles on captains and all-star games. If one wishes to know the author
of “excuses are for losers” or “predictions are for gypsies,”
one need look no further. They form part of the history of an
organization that exhorts its players to hold high the torch of its
winning tradition. This handbook illuminates many of the traditions of
hockey in general, and of Les Canadiens in particular.