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Feb 6, 2012
Wayne Gretzky's Ghost
And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey
Summary
For years, the morning skate was a Christmas Day ritual for my father and me.After the presents had been unwrapped and before the morning service, my dad and I walked to the nearby city park and took to the ice. We'd take a few runs down the empty rink, trading long passes across the ice, then challenge each other in some turns at one-on-one, and then maybe finish with a shooting match, calling the spot in the net that we were going to hit.My dad lives now on a lake in the Minnesota woods. This year, he and my mom had shoveled the snow to clear a rink for their visiting grandkids.The ice was perfect for the Christmas morning skate.Father and son took to the ice again, along with grandsons and granddaughters.
One of the pleasures of Roy MacGregor's hockey writing is that it infused with the same love of a fresh rink and the feel of skates cutting into clean ice.For close to four decades, Roy has been covering the game for the Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Maclean's, and he has written several fiction and non-fiction books on hockey.His new book, Wayne Gretzky's Ghost: And Other Tales from a Lifetime in Hockey (Random House Canada, 2011), brings together a generous sample of this work.The dedicated fan will savor this expert tour of the sport, from the Forum of the 1970s to Walter's backyard, while a newcomer will appreciate the far-reaching introduction to hockey's great players, pressing issues, and its place in Canadian culture.
In the book and our interview, Roy discusses some of hockey's most prominent characters: TV commentator Don Cherry, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, and the Great One himself. We talk about Roy's personal encounters with the game's legends, such as Bobby Orr and Paul Henderson, and the stories of unsung figures like Mark Visentin and Mario Lemieux's mother.We discuss the cloud of violence that has darkened hockey for decades and has become even more menacing in recent years.And we talk about how the experience of playing the game, even with medium talent, can--and should--shape the way we watch and write about sports.
