Review of "The Game That Saved the NHL"

I read most of this book on a train ride to a baseball game.  Now, I usually like to read about the sport I am going to see on those trips, but this book had me intrigued, so I had to do so then.  It didn't disappoint as I really enjoyed it.  Here is my review of "The Game That Saved the NHL"

Title/Author:

“The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies, the Soviet Red Machine and Super Series ‘76” by Ed Gruver

Rating: 

5 of 5 stars (excellent)

Review:  In the 1970’s, professional hockey in North America (two leagues at that time, the NHL and the WHA) was undergoing an identity crisis.  Long believed to have the most superior players and teams, Canada had barely won the Summit Series in 1972 against the best in Russia after being overconfident early in the series.  Nearly four years later, after some growling by NHL officials that the Russians had never faced the best teams instead of a group of all-stars, it was decided to have the two best squads in Russia, the Red Army team and the Wings, face eight of the best NHL teams at that time. This book by Ed Gruver focuses on the last of these matchups that pitted the Red Army team against the reigning Stanley Cup champions, the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Flyers earned the nickname the “Broad Street Bullies” due to the location of their arena and their very physical style of play.  They were very popular with the fans and apparently with the author as he refers to them as the Bullies instead of the Flyers much more frequently throughout the book.  Nonetheless, the book as a whole is more of a look at that Flyers team with the actual game being the climax of the story – even though it does finish when the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup finals later in 1976 to the Montreal Canadiens.

The stories of the players and of head coach Fred Shero are the best aspect of the book and they are interspersed throughout.  Whether it was a superstar such as Bobby Clarke, a fighter like Dave Schultz or a player not so well known such as Ed Van Impe, Gruver will give the reader a mini-biography on each one profiled and connect it back to the story.  The best example of this was during the most famous part of the Flyers, er, Bullies game against the Red Army.

Van Impe laid a check into the best offensive player on the Red Army team, Valeri Kharlamov, that left the Russian star down on the ice for 10 minutes.  When coach Konstantin Loktev protested for a penalty to be called and none was whistled, he pulled his team off the ice.  This incident is probably the most remembered moment, but the game did showcase the hockey skills of the Flyers, er, Bullies as well as their physicality.  That they won by the score of 4-1 is less important than the fact that they were given notice by officials that they had to win the game for political reasons as well as proving that NHL hockey was just as good as Russian hockey.

That Gruver was able to cover all this ground is a tribute to the work he put into this project. He will come across as pro-Bullies and NHL here, but that fits the mood at the time since this was at the height of the Cold War.  Fans of that era of hockey, whether they favored the NHL style or the Russian style, should pick up this book.

I wish to thank Lyons Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Link: The Game That Saved the NHL: The Broad Street Bullies, the Soviet Red Machine, and Super Series '76: Gruver, Ed, Watson, Joe: 9781493074976: Amazon.com: Books