The NHL: 100 Years Of On-Ice Action And Boardroom Battles

Features of The NHL: 100 Years of On-Ice Action and Boardroom Battles

Indepth research meets great storytelling in the history of an organization that has been a talking point and newsmaker for 100 yearsThe National Hockey Leagueborn in a Montreal hotel room on November 26 1917has much to celebrate as it approaches its centenary Millions of fans from Montreal to Miami and Edmonton to Anaheim attend NHL games each year millions more watch on TV and the league pays its best players multimillion annual salariesOver the course of its first century the NHLs fortunes have ebbed and flowed It has experienced setbacks and triumphs and innumerable crises The league has awarded many franchises only to see some of them falter fail and fold The board of governorswhich has included rich eccentrics and at least one future convicthas sometimes been fractured by men who loathed each other How on earth has the NHL survived The answer lies in the remarkable fact that it has had only five presidents and one commissioner Two of these chiefs were stopgaps For the balance of leagues ninetyplus years four men have shaped and guided its fortunes and controlled the tough hardnosed sometimes unruly owners who constituted the board of governorsThis is the story of two perpetual strugglesthe one on the ice and the one going on behind the scenes to keep the whole enterprise afloat DArcy Jenish was granted unprecedented access to previously unpublished league files including revelatory minutes of board meetings and conducted dozens of hours of interviews with league executives including commissioner Gary Bettman and former president John Ziegler as well as well as owners coaches general managers and player representatives He now reveals for the first time the true story behind some of the most significant events of the contemporary eraThis is a definitive revelatory chonicle that no serious hockey fan will want to be without