Don't Call Me Goon

October 28, 2013
Authors Kamchen and Oliver have provided a rambling encyclopedia of the NHL's oft-demonized enforcers. While âenforcer' is not an official position, every NHL team has at least one player whose primary role is to protect his most skilled teammates, intimidate other teams' players, and battle his opposite numbers. The ability to skate, defend, or score comes a distant second. In our age of heightened awareness of head trauma, the NHL is paying increased attention to player safety, but fights, and enforcers, still bring fans to the games. Enforcers distinguish North American hockey from European iterations of the game, and a historical overview of the evolution and shifting requirements of the job would be fascinating; however, Kamchen and Oliver don't provide one. Instead, they breeze from one mini-bio to the next and as a result, the names blur together. The enforcer story follows a template: player enters minor leagues. Player can fight. Player gets scouted because he can fight. Player earns a high-paying, violent job. Despite the sameness of this approach, the authors serve up plenty of fascinating anecdotes and remind us that, despite their savage pedigrees, there's more to these men than the armored warriors we see brutalizing each other on the ice.

September 1, 2013
For many years, the casual fan associated professional hockey with endless, bench-clearing brawls between guys with missing teeth. Recently, though, the National Hockey League, seeing the success of no-fight Olympic hockey in attracting new fans to the sport, has minimized fighting among its players. But many of the hockey's legends and best-known personalities through the years have been its enforcers. Oliver and Kamchen did the research and the interviews, leading to such descriptions as, He had huge balls: he'd fight anybody, anytime. One theme that recurs time and again is that of the less-talented player who makes the team and eventually has a career because he was willing to mix it up. For example, John Wensink was such a terrible skater that his coach, the legendary Don Cherry, joked that he considered buying him a pair of double-runners. One memorable fight landed Wensink's victim in the hospital and earned Wensink a visit from the police. Some of the anecdotes are funny; others, like the beating Wensink administered, not so much. But hockey's tough guys are part of the sport's history, and the authors tell it well.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)