Stephen Smith 
Puckstruck 
Distracted, Delighted and Distressed by Canada’s Hockey Obsession

Like many a Canadian kid, Stephen Smith was up on skates first thing as a boy, out in the weather chasing a puck and the promise of an NHL career. Back indoors after that didn’t quite work out, he turned to the bookshelf. That’s where, without entirely meaning to, he ended up reading all the hockey books. There was
Crunch and
Boom Boom,
Slashing! and
High Stick; there was
Max Bentley: Hockey’s Dipsy-Doodle Dandy,
Blue Line Murder, and
Nagano, a Czech hockey opera. There was
Blood on the Ice,
Cracked Ice,
Fire On Ice,
Power On Ice,
Cowboy On Ice, and
Steel On Ice.



In
Puckstruck, Smith chronicles his wide-eyed and sometimes wincing wander through hockey’s literature, language, and culture, weighing its excitement and unbridled joy against its costs and vexing brutality. In exploring his own lifelong love of the game, hoping to surprise some sense out of it, he sifts hockey’s narratives in search of hockey’s heart, what it means and why it should distress us even as we celebrate its glories. On a journey to discover what the game might have to say about who we are as Canadians, he seeks to answer some of its essential riddles.

About the author

Stories of
Stephen Smith’s concerning five-dollar bills and boy travel writers have appeared in
Geist and
Mc Sweeney’s. He has also written for
The Globe and Mail,
Outside, and
The New York Times Magazine. Smith tends a blog, puckstruck.com, that keeps an eye on hockey’s history, culture, and literature. He shoots left.