Review of "Tales from the Montreal Canadiens Locker Room"

I started listening to this audio book on my recent trip to a Canadiens-Rangers hockey game, keeping in line with my policy to read or listen to books appropriate for my trip. However, I didn't finish it that night, had to put it aside to get another review done, and came back to it, finishing today.  Here is my review.

Title/Author:

“Tales from the Montreal Canadiens Locker Room: A Collection of the Greatest Canadiens Stories Ever Told” by Robert S. Lefebvre, narrated by J.P. Linton

Rating: 

3 of 5 stars (good)

Review:

As the hockey team who has won the most Stanley Cups, this book on the Montreal Canadiens from the collection of similar titles for other teams in the four major sports sounded like one that would be full of excellent stories.  While this book by Robert S. Lefebvre has a few of them, especially during the greatest eras for the team in the 1950’s and the 1970’s, overall, this book fell short of those expectations.

One aspect that did not fall short of expectations was the narration of the book by J.P. Linton.  Even more than the good stories, I felt that Linton did a fantastic job on the narration, especially in the earlier chapter when the connection between the Canadiens and the Francophone population in the province of Quebec.  His pronunciation of the French names was very good, and he provided excellent narration of the hockey stories as well.

Here is where the book was not what I expected – the actual stories.  When I see one of these books in the “Tales from the Locker Room” series, I expect a lot of stories about the players’ camaraderie, their antics away from the games and of course game action as well.  This book lacked much of these.  There were more historical stories of how great Canadiens teams were either built or had their dynasties come to an end.  This was especially true for the Montreal teams that won four consecutive Cups from 1976 to 1979.  The stories were more about the players after they left the Canadiens that led to the end of their dynasty in the spring of 1980.  Or, if not that topic, there were plenty on how some of those players were acquired, such as how the trade for Guy Lafleur was conducted. 

Those types of stories, which were many of them no matter what era was being discussed, were good and well-researched. They did hold my interest long enough for me to finish the book, although Linton’s narration helped with that as well.  This just was not the collection of stories I expected.  Readers or listeners who are more interested in the workings of the Montreal front office through the decades would be the target audience for this book.

Link: Amazon.com: Tales from the Montreal Canadiens Locker Room: A Collection of the Greatest Canadiens Stories Ever Told (Audible Audio Edition): J. P. Linton, Robert S. Lefebvre, Audible Studios: Books