The storm of the century is coming to the hockey-book world.
With 2016-17 both the 100th anniversary of the NHL and the Maple Leafs — not to mention 50 years since Toronto’s last Cup and league expansion — this Christmas has some great titles that might get overlooked in the coming rush to party like it’s 1917.
Here are some of this year’s favourites:
Hockey Night Fever
By: Stephen Cole (Doubleday Canada, 395 pages, $32)
Hard to shoe-horn the eventful ’70s into one book, but it’s all here. Cole sets the table with background on the Phil Esposito trade from Chicago to Boston, the rise of Bobby Orr, a little Team Canada and on to the main course, the fighting Flyers, dysfunctional Leafs and the roots of the mighty Canadiens en route to four Cups at the decade’s end.