Thursday, February 2, 2023

Review of "A Guy Like Me"

As part of a reading challenge, I had to find a hockey memoir.  Not wanting to purchase a new book when I was convinced I could find one on Kindle Unlimited or in a library, I found this one.  Having remembered John Scott from the fan vote to make him an All-Star, I decided on this for that story and wasn't disappointed.  Here is my review of "A Guy Like Me."


 

Title/Author:

“A Guy Like Me: Fighting to Make the Cut” by John Scott with Brian Cazenevue

Rating: 

4 of 5 stars (very good)

Review: John Scott’s story of his rise to become an enforcer in the NHL is not unlike those of others who have followed similar paths in order to become players in the highest professional league in North America with less than outstanding skills.  While they are similar, every story has its unique turns and Scott’s is no different.  He tells his tale in this fun and easy-to-read memoir he wrote with Brian Cazenevue.

Start with the most obvious reason that Scott’s story is different.  He went from being a relatively obscure player who bounced around for several teams to becoming not only an All-Star that was voted into the game by fans, but he also won the All-Star game MVP award in 2016.  What makes that even more remarkable was that the fan voting took place while Scott was a member of the Arizona Coyotes, but before the All-Star game, he was traded to the Montreal Canadiens, who sent him down to their minor league team in the American Hockey League.  So, you had a player going to the All-Star game who was currently playing in the minor leagues.  Which does sound like it qualifies as something different than stories of other hockey tough men.

Scott’s stories about this chapter of his career is certainly the best part of the book, both in the information he shares and the entertainment value of the book.  However, that doesn’t discount the fact that the rest of the book is a solid effort in which Scott never takes himself too seriously, shares the self-doubt that plagued him at each level of hockey and each off-season as he would usually sign one year contracts with each team that paid for his services.  He played for a total of seven NHL teams.  In addition to the Coyotes and Canadiens (he did get called back to the NHL by Montreal), he played for the Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks, New York Rangers, Buffalo Sabres and San Jose Sharks.

The sections about Scott’s personal life, how he met and fell in love with his wife Danielle when both were students as Michigan Tech, and also his college hockey career at Tech when they were one of the struggling teams in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association also make great reading.  Hockey fans will be the ones who will want to pick up this book if they have not already done so, as it’s one that has a lot of hockey talk inside and will make a reader a fan of John Scott if they are not already one.      

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Guy-Like-Me-Fighting-Make/dp/1501159658/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

 

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