Take Your Eye off the Puck: How to Watch Hockey by Knowing Where to Look - Softcover

More and more fans are watching the NHL each week, but many of them don’t know exactly what they should be watching. How does an offense create shooting lanes for its best sniper? When a center breaks through and splits between two defensemen, which defender is to blame? Why does a goalie look like a Hall of Famer one week and a candidate for the minor leagues the next? Fans are starving to learn more about the game they love, to appreciate the intricacies of their sport the way baseball fans do theirs. Take Your Eye Off the Puck takes you inside a coach’s mind as he builds a roster or constructs a game plan, to the chaos of the goalie’s crease, and deep into the perpetual chess match between offense and defense. Neither a beginner’s introduction to hockey nor a technical manual for only the most studious of fans, the book explains topics such as the pros and cons of different personnel groups, what to look for when a team goes on the power play, and why playing center might be the most grueling job in sports.

Eddie Olczyk is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, a former NHL player and coach, and is currently the television analyst for the Chicago Blackhawks on Comcast SportsNet Chicago and WGN and the NHL on NBC and NBC Sports. Tab Bamford is the author of 100 Things Blackhawks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. He is the owner and managing editor of CommittedIndians.com, serves as a columnist for the Fourth Period, and contributes a sports blog at ChicagoNow.com. They both live in Chicago.