Brian's New Song: Living the Hockey Dream

October 28, 3:28 PMLos Angeles Kings ExaminerJonathan Moncrief

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Los Angeles Kings Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

The new book 'Living the Hockey Dream' is available in bookstores everywhere

Courtesy: Folk Lore Publishing

There seem to be two types of hockey fans in the world: those that have been exposed to the game in adulthood, and because of the combination of speed, power, agility, courage, and passion displayed by the players that play at the NHL level, can’t help but fall in love with the sport and embrace it.

Then, there’s the type that grew up with the sport from a very young age. These are the ones that lived the sport everyday all of their lives, in most cases playing the game in their youth and dreaming of one day playing professional hockey.

So it should come as no surprise that Dr. Brian Kennedy, whose acclaimed 2007 book Growing Up Hockey captured the hearts and minds of readers throughout North America, returns with a second book called Living the Hockey Dream.

“I didn’t think I had another book in me,” Kennedy told me recently, “but from the first book, people starting sending me their own stories… so I talked to the publishers. They didn’t think that would sell but that I should write a collection of profiles of NHL players… eventually, we agreed to not just NHL people only, but people involved in various levels of the game, combined with some of my stories.”

Kennedy writes about the sport for the website Inside Hockey.  But he is also a professor of English at Pasadena City College, which becomes a very interesting factoid when you discover who in-depth the writing and editing process can be. Kennedy told me recently about how arduous a task the process can be, without understand its overall importance.

“I worked with a fiction editor they assigned during the first book named Kathy van Denderen,” Kennedy confided, “she’s an amazing and brilliant woman who spent an incredible amount of time on both of my books. We did a ton of re-writing to make both of them much more seamless… one of the great things about her working with me on both books is that, she doesn’t know hockey at all, which was very helpful. She allowed me to make this book the best that we could make it… maybe other writers have an adversarial relationship with their editors, but with Kathy, it was never ‘you need to change this,’ it was more along the lines of ‘you might want to change this’, which was very helpful for my process.”

The book, published by Folk Lore Publishing, is broken down into five different sections. Kennedy writes a kind of ‘mini-forward’ to each segment, to reveal the context of these varied portions, which include anywhere from five to ten chapters written about a divergence of people that have or are still having the chance to live the dream. And like Wayne Gretzky, one of Kennedy’s numerous subject matters, Kennedy uses these segues like tape-to-tape passes, allowing the reader to get a true feel for each chapter.

Jim Fox is a television hockey analyst in Los Angeles, and was a willing participant in the story-telling process. Fox told me recently that when Kennedy approached with the idea for the book, he never hesitated in telling his story.

“I’ve know Brian for a few years, and he told me what the idea for the book was and I was glad to help him,” Fox said. “He wasn’t looking for anything specific, he just let me tell my story and it kind of evolved from there… that time (discussed in the book) was a special time in my life because, I was 15 years old and away from my family for the first time, but in playing hockey with that group, they became my ‘hockey family’ and I learned a lot about myself during that time… (those years) are some of the fondest memories I have in hockey.”

Kennedy gives credit to Fox in terms of helping shape the skeletal for how the book would unfold.

“I called him and I said, ‘Jim, I have this new book, I know you have a good story,’ and he was very receptive to the process,” Kennedy explained. “Jim spent a lot of time with me on the phone and working through drafts, and it helped me establish the voice and premise for writing the book, and how to ask the right questions to other people to get out the good details that I needed in telling their stories.”

The book features a broad brushstroke of people. It includes tales from legends like Bobby Clarke, Marcel Dionne, Bobby Hull, Kevin Lowe, and Gretzky. It also includes great accounts from others such as Cammi Granato (arguably the greatest female hockey player of all-time), Lorne Henning, Rick Kehoe, Ian Turnbull, Jim Pappin, and many more.

“I wanted to talk to people from different eras, different positions, and had to do a lot of research to confirm facts,” Kennedy said. “I wanted players with recognition, players ‘on the fringe’, but I also needed some marquee names; and in every case, I needed to make sure there was a story that I could use within the book.”

Anze Kopitar began this week leading the NHL in scoring, and is a key cog in the Kings’ rebuilding efforts. He acknowledged that the book was a unique way of talking about his life and his dreams of playing the sport, especially as the first player from Slovenia to make it to the NHL.

“He kind of just let me tell my story about growing up and playing the game and the fond memories that I have from that time in my life,” Kopitar commented, “my parents were such a big part of that, they were very supportive, especially my dad who was my first coach, showing me a lot of things like he did.”

Kennedy also takes the opportunity to talk with people that, for lack of a better phrase, are on ‘the fringe’ of the hockey world, yet are just as interesting to read about as their more well-known counterparts. These include journeyman Mike Weaver, referee Mick McGeough, Paralympics’ player Jean Labonte, and ‘keeper of the Stanley Cup’ Phil Pritchard.

“I need thematic sections,” Kennedy stated, “otherwise, its just 40 stories about (various hockey players) and their childhood rinks, so it had to be more than just childhood reflections.”

Kennedy’s style of book-ending each section allows the flow to be more than just a series of transcribed ‘Q and A’s’ and makes the reader feel as though they are sitting at a round table, listening in as each person tells their story.

Part of the concept, especially for those players that are far more recognizable, was to humanize all of these stories, allowing them to be placed on a level surface. No story is made to feel superior to others because of their end result; truth be told, if you strip away the names and were to insert made-up names, the tapestry would reveal commonality of family values, inner-belief, determination and self reliance, and a desire to live out their hockey dream in their own way.

“To me, this book allows the reader’s heroes to speak to them in a way they haven’t spoken to them before," Kennedy mentioned, "it’s about who they were before the game and what the game did for them and made them into. The vastness of the hockey universe; you think of the NHL, but you don’t think about riding the bus in the minors, you don’t realize how some of these people made it as far as they did, and not just the top-name people, but also other people that help make up the game.”

This is what makes the book so enjoyable, that you could actually see yourself living out these stories: shooting pucks at a bus full of tourists trying to sneak a peek at your famous father; grafting a first-baseman glove’s pocket into a hockey catching glove to revolutionize the goaltending position; getting up before the sun rises to fill the stove with coal, thus fulfilling your chores and allowing you to sprint to the nearby frozen pond to play ‘Shinny’ until it was too dark to see; fully decorating your basement complete with goalmouths and lines to play hockey indoors; or even helping a cousin, stricken by a near debilitating illness, find enjoyment in the sport by helping him strap on goalie pads for the very first time.

“They told me their stories and their vulnerabilities without hesitation, knowing that they were going to be shared with the world,” Kennedy reflected. “So, for example, the conversation I had with Ray Ferraro, how free he was with details, and the intimate things about his relationship with his dad, was very surprising to me and it was just a privilege to be able to compile these stories and write them in a way that made them relatable… these are real people with foibles and doubts and families and everyday issues like ordinary people.”

There are plenty of books out there to buy about sports and about hockey. But if you are looking for one book to purchase for yourself to take with you on a trip, or as a special gift this upcoming holiday season for the hockey fan in your life, my unwavering suggestion is to purchase Living the Hockey Dream. You can do so now by clicking this link to Amazon’s website, by clicking here for Barnes & Noble’s website, by going to your local bookstore, or by contacting the publisher directly through their website at this link.

For my own chapter of Living the Hockey Dream, written at the author’s suggestion in the final pages of his book, click here to read it at the Hockeywood, L.A. website.

For more info: The Kings next home game is this Thursday when they face Roberto Luongo and the Vancouver Canucks at 7:30pm at Staples Center. Following the game, which is being held on 'Canadian Night', fans can attend a post-game concert at Club Nokia where the band Tragically Hip will be performing. Tickets to the game and concert start at a combined $39 each; click here for tickets... For tickets to all Kings games in the 2009-10 regular season, including many specially priced partial and full season ticket plans, click here to visit the team's ticket site or call (888) KINGS-LA... The Kings Care Foundation announced that their annual food drive, which will benefit both the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank and the Salvation Army, will take place during four home games in November: Thursday the 5th against Pittsburgh, Saturday the 7th against Nashville, Wednesday the 18th against Philadelphia, and Saturday the 21st against Calgary. For more information about the great works being done in the community by the Kings Care Foundation, contact Jennifer Weinstein at 310-535-4466... Be sure to also check out my contributions to 'Hockeywood, L.A.', as well as my fellow featured contributors, by clicking here... to get my latest takes on all things Kings, hockey, sports, and life in general, follow me all the time on Twitter by clicking here.