Martin Avery reflects on the place of hockey in the Canadian soul. Bobby Orr And Me flows from Avery's boyhood games in the Muskoka/Parry Sound region in the heart of Canada and it examines the globalization of hockey. Part memoir, part essay on national identity, part hockey history, Hockey Dreams is a meditation by a Canadian author on the essence of the game that helps define our nation.

Even hockey legends start with hand-me-downs. A beautifully illustrated true childhood story about hockey great Bobby Orr. Bobby eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. So when his birthday is coming up, he only wants one thing: new skates. He's seen the exact pair he wants in the shop window: sparkling blades, shiny leather, clean new laces tied in perfect bows. But when Bobby opens his gift, he's dismayed to find hand-me-down skates: scuffed leather, nicked blades, floppy laces. Once Bobby breaks them in, though, he and the hand-me-down skates become inseparable, and he can't imagine life without them . . . until the brand-new skates come into his life. How can he leave his hand-me-down skates behind? Log Driver's Waltz illustrator Jennifer Phelan brings this classic story to life with timeless, gorgeous art, and Kara Kootsra's words evoke the joy and dedication that Bobby Orr brought to his favorite sport. A perfect gift for readers and fans big and small, this book is destined to be a classic that is reached for time and time again.

Bursting upon the National Hockey League scene in the fall of 1966 amid enormous hype and expectations, Robert Gordon "Bobby" Orr would go on to exceed all predictions of greatness. Displaying All-Star level ability from the start, it was his talent as a play maker and scorer that utterly revolutionized the game of hockey. At the same time, Orr helped revive a tired, long-suffering Boston Bruins team, leading them to their first Stanley Cup in twenty-nine years at the age of twenty-two. Orr and

Grade level: 3, 4,5 e, p, i.

The book that hockey fans have been waiting for: the definitive, unauthorized account of the man many say was the greatest player the game has ever seen. The legend of Bobby Orr is one of the most enduring in sport. Even those who have never played the game of hockey know that the myth surrounding Canada’s great pastime originates in places like Bobby Orr’s Parry Sound. In the glory years of the Original Six – an era when the majority of NHLers were Canadian – hockey players seemed to emerge fully formed from our frozen rivers and backyard rinks, to have found the source of their genius somehow in the landscape. Like Mozart, they just appeared – Howie Morenz, Gordie Howe, Maurice Richard and Bobby Orr – spun out of the elements, prodigies, geniuses, originals, to stoke the fantasy of a nation united around a puck. Bobby Orr redefined the defensive style of hockey; there was nothing like it before him. He was the first to infuse the defenseman position with offensive juice, driving up the ice, setting up players and scoring some goals of his own. He was the first player to win three straight MVP awards, the first defenseman to score twenty or more goals in a season. His most famous goal won the Boston Bruins the Stanley Cup in 1970 – for the first time in twenty-nine years – against the St. Louis Blues in overtime. But history will also remember Bobby Orr as a key figure in the Alan Eagleson scandal, and as the unfortunate player forced into early retirement in 1978 because of his injuries. His is a story of dramatic highs and lows. In Searching for Bobby Orr, Canada’s foremost sportswriter gives us a compelling and graceful look at the life and times of Bobby Orr that is also a revealing portrait of a game and a country in transition. So Bobby Orr could skate, he could stickhandle, he could fight when he had to. He could shoot without looking at the net, without tipping a goaltender as to what was coming. His slapshot came without a big windup, and was deadly accurate. Skating backwards, defending, he was all but unbeatable one on one. He could poke check the puck away, or muscle a forward into the boards. In front of his own net, stronger on his feet than his skinny frame would suggest, he wouldn’t be moved. But there was more… –from Searching for Bobby Orr

Who knew grade six music could be so scary? For kids who love The Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Dork Diaries comes a hilarious new entry into funny middle-grade novels. Jay Roberts loves hockey. He's good at it. He also loves his hockey hero, Bobby Orr, considered a legend by Jay's grandfather. In fact, even though they may bicker, when it comes to the Bruins, the whole family agrees that they are the team to root for. When it comes to hockey, Jay's a team player, but there's one person who seems determined to make life hard for Jay: his classmate and fellow team member, Mick Bartlet. It's a good thing Jay can usually stickhandle his way out of his bullying. But something else is determined to make Jay's life difficult, something far harder for Jay to play: the saxophone. Sixth grade just became a whole lot more challenging ...

One of the greatest sports figures of all time at last breaks his silence in a memoir as unique as the man himself. Number 4. It is just about the most common number in hockey, but invoke that number and you can only be talking about one player -- the man often referred to as the greatest ever to play the game: Bobby Orr. From 1966 through the mid-70s he could change a game just by stepping on the ice. Orr could do things that others simply couldn’t, and while teammates and opponents alike scrambled to keep up, at times they could do little more than stop and watch. Many of his records still stand today and he remains the gold standard by which all other players are judged. Mention his name to any hockey fan – or to anyone in New England – and a look of awe will appear.

For nearly two decades as CenterStage's host, Kay has conducted hourlong conversations with American pop culture's most intriguing personalities. Here he has gathered the conversations that best exemplify the show's distinctive blend of humor, inspiration, and self-revelation. Kay also includes behind-the-scenes stories. -- adapted from jacket

A captivating memoir from Canada’s foremost hockey historian and a beloved NHL commentator It’s been 85 years since Brian McFarlane first laced a pair of skates and tested the black ice on a tiny pond. And then he discovered the joy of hockey. Ultimately, there would be grade school hockey, high school hockey, junior hockey, college hockey, and, miraculously, two decades with the NHL Oldtimers anchoring his life. He was the rank amateur playing on a line with the Big M and Norm Ullman, facing off against icons like Gordie Howe and Ted Lindsay at Maple Leaf Gardens — even scoring a goal. He suited up at the Montreal Forum, elbow-to-elbow against John Ferguson, before thousands of fans. (There was even a stint with the Flying Fathers who ordained him a “Bishop” after a hat trick.) Off the ice, in 1960, McFarlane was the first Canadian to be a commentator on CBS’s coverage of the NHL. He also survived 25 years of Hockey Night in Canada — despite confrontations with Punch Imlach, Harold Ballard, Bobby Hull, and Eddie Shack. Now, in this revealing autobiography, he remembers it all. For Brian McFarlane, it has been a helluva life in hockey.

A wildly evocative chronicle of the decade that changed hockey forever. "Lady Byng died in Boston" read a sign in the Garden arena in 1970, a cheery dismissal of the NHL trophy awarded the game's most gentlemanly player. A new age of hockey was dawning. For 30 years, hockey was an orderly and (relatively) well-behaved sport. There was one Commissioner, six teams and five colours--red, white, black, blue and yellow. Oh, and one nationality. Until 1967, every player, coach, referee and GM in the NHL had been a Canadian. And then came NHL expansion, the founding of the WHA, and garish new uniforms. The Seventies had arrived: the era that gave us not only disco, polyester suits, lava lamps and mullets but also the movie Slap Shot and the arrest of ten NHL players for on-ice mayhem. But it also gave us hockey's greatest encounter (the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit), its most splendid team, the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens, and the most aesthetically satisfying game--the three-all tie on New Year's Eve, 1975, between the Canadiens and the Soviet Red Army. Modern hockey was born in the sport's wild, sensational, sometimes ugly Seventies growth spurt. The forces at play in the decade's battle for hockey supremacy--dazzling speed vs. brute force--are now, for better or worse, part of hockey's DNA. This book is a welcome reappraisal of the ten years that changed how the sport was played and experienced. Informed by first-hand interviews with players and game officials, and sprinkled with sidebars on the art and artifacts that defined Seventies hockey, the book brings dramatically alive hockey's most eventful, exciting decade.