Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places - Softcover

Bidini, Dave

3.84

254 ratings by Goodreads

9781592285174: Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592285171 ISBN 13: 9781592285174

Publisher: Lyons Pr, 2004

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From Toronto to China, Dubai to Transylvania and back, a hilarious, moving account of one man's quest for "pure hockey."

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From the Back Cover:

On a hot summer’s day in 1998, when Dave Bidini found himself watching Martha Stewart rather than the Stanley Cup playoffs, he knew that something was seriously amiss: The game he loved had crossed the line. It was now an entertainment, not a sport. A passionate hockey fan and rec player, Bidini immediately resolved to follow Canada’s best export to the rest of the world, to find out whether the true game still existed elsewhere.
His quest took him to a rink on the eighth floor of a shopping mall in Hong Kong—a rink encircled by a fierce dragon-headed roller coaster—to the gritty city of Harbin in Northern China, where a game much like hockey has been played for six hundred years; to Dubai, in the desert of the United Arab Emirates, where hockey is brand-new, and incredulous Bedouin drop by the Al Ain rink to wonder at the ice; and to Transylvania, where the game was introduced in the 1920s by a ten-second newsreel of Canadians chasing after a puck, and where it is now played as a vicarious war between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians.
In Tropic of Hockey, Bidini weaves hilarious stories of encounters with odd-sized rinks and players of wildly different talents and experiences with tales of his travels and spot-on observations about the game and players in North America. And he discovers that the tropic of hockey connects players and fans around the world in a celebration of the game—not to mention the profanity, the exhilaration, and the moments of grace that enrich it.

From the Inside Flap:

One hot afternoon in 1998, Dave Bidini – who loves hockey, watches it, plays it, and breathes it – found the Stanley Cup final so tedious to watch that at one point he clicked channels to Martha Stewart – and never switched back. This made him wonder where in the world the game might exist free of the complications of professional sport. He set out to find the tropic of hockey.

His quest took him to a rink on the seventh storey of a mall in Hong Kong – a rink encircled by a dragon-headed roller coaster – and to the gritty city of Harbin in northern China, where a version of hockey has been played for 600 years; to Dubai in the desert of the United Emirates, where hockey is brand new and incredulous Bedouin drop by the Al Ain rink to touch the ice; and to Transylvania, where the game is a war between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians, who were introduced to hockey by a 1929 newsreel of Canadians chasing the puck.

Bidini's encounters with odd-sized rinks and players of wildly different talents and experiences have inspired him to interweave his stories of hockey in unlikely places with funny and eyebrow-raising stories about places and players back in Canada. As a bonus, readers are also treated to some striking observations about the game, its fans, and the testosterone, the profanity, and the moments of grace that enrich it.

From the Hardcover edition.

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