No major professional sports organization has undergone more turmoil--and embarrassment--in the past decade that the National Hockey Leauge. The NHL has faced management shake-ups, skyrocketing player salaries, franchise movement, expansion, and players' strikes while attempting to compete for the attention of sports fans against the "big three"--baseball, football, and basketball. In this penetrating analysis, Stan Fischler examines the rise, fall, and attempted comeback of big league hockey. Fischler, a highly respected hockey reporter and author, gives an insider's look at the league's struggles on and off the ice while taking a look toward the sport's future. Fischler spares no one in Cracked Ice, not even icons such as Wayne Gretzky and Chris Chelios, while also taking shots at the sports media establishment and NHL officials. Cracked Ice is a revealing look behind the scenes at a league living on the edge.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
If Stan Fischler wasn't present at hockey's creation, he arrived on the scene soon after. He saw his first game, he likes to remind you, before Pearl Harbor was bombed, and began cashing checks as a hockey writer before the Montreal Canadiens launched their dynasty in the early 1950s. Nearly half a century later, he's fed up with what he sees: "[T]he new NHL era--one where luxury boxes became more important than ordinary seats, where venerable arenas like Chicago Stadium were replaced and the new ones named after corporations, and where players were traded not because of a stickhandler's skill, but rather because of what the player was earning or wanted to earn." And that barely scratches the ice.
Sound familiar? That's Fischler's point. Like baseball, football, and basketball, hockey finds itself watered down, spread too thin, and filled with as much action in the law courts as in the arenas. Fischler tells the story of hockey in the first half of the '90s; it's not a pretty one, filled as it is with greed, strikes, lockouts, management fiascoes, on-ice free-for-alls, and a revolving door in the commissioner's office. Moving into the late '90s, it gets worse: Fischler next focuses on Nashville's attempts to woo the Jersey Devils south before winning an expansion franchise, the Whalers move from Hartford to North Carolina, the sale of the Islanders to a buyer who didn't have close to the necessary money, the concentration of power in the Players' Association, and the 11th-hour bail-outs of Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay.
What makes this all so fascinating is Fischler's stunning reportage, and his own willingness not to just stay objectively cool on the sidelines. Fischler loves the game, and he's hopeful. "The NHL does not like to hear ... criticism," he makes clear, "but those of us with a stake in the game believe the problems must be addressed." His passion doesn't just crack the ice, it melts it. --Jeff Silverman
From the Back Cover
The 1990s were not the best of times for the National Hockey League. A series of management blunders, labor unrest, and public relations disasters undermined the league's efforts to establish itself as a major sport in the United States. In Cracked Ice, Stan Fischler, the dean of North American hockey writers, offers an inside account of what went wrong-while giving insight into what must be done if the league is to be successful in the years ahead. Cracked Ice is a brutally candid expose of big league hockey by one of its most respected observers.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Potentially intriguing book wrecked by bad editing & writing,
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This review is from: Cracked Ice (Hardcover)
If you buy this book, as I did, expecting it to be what it was supposed to be ("An insider's look at the NHL"), you're pretty much out of luck. I knew nothing of Stan Fischler before I started Cracked Ice and finished the book knowing far more than I coud ever have wanted. This is "me journalism" at its worst -- do we really need to be told time and time again at great length how he prepared for a TV interview, where he stood in some building waiting to catch an NHL bigwig and how much he, Stan Fischler, is respected in the game? Half way through the book I found myself muttering "Shut up already". The only exception to the self-serving litany is a powerful chapter detailing the severe heart problems which strike down Fischler's teenage son and the warm-hearted reaction from friends (and adversaries)in the game. But I cannot believe the publishers could not have found an editor capable of whipping this overblown diary, this notebook, into something resembling a decent product. The book focusses largely on the overthrow of former NHL supremo John Ziegler and the travails of the New York Islanders and the New Jersey Devils. If like me you wanted some insight into why the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets moved south, you're out of luck again. What is most frustrating about Cracked Ice is that Fischler obviously does have the contacts within the game and has a huge amount of knowledge. When he resists the urge to tell you how wonderful he is, the author comes up with the goods and gives us real insights into the dirty deals, botched PR exercises and the other ailments of the game. I only wish this book had come with a warning about Fischler's oversized ego.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Insiders Perspective,
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This review is from: Cracked Ice (Hardcover)
I'm afraid the previous reviewer does Stan Fischler a disservice, because if he doesn't know who he is prior to picking up the book he's setting himself up for a disappointment. Fischler happens to be one of the most knowledgable men about hockey but he also happens to be New York based and reports on the Islanders and Devils so you would have to expect that he's going to focus chiefly on his own strengths. Devoting space to the moves of Minnesota and Quebec would be like asking a Quebec writer/broadcaster to devote equal space to the travails of the Islanders and Devils. And while as a Ranger fan Fischler's anti-Ranger bias has annoyed me for years at times, he is a knowledgable insider and the best hockey author I know of. This book is worth reading.
3.0 out of 5 stars
My Review of Cracked Ice,
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Cracked Ice (Hardcover)
The book, Cracked Ice: an Insider's Look at the NHL, was ok in my opinion. It was more like a news story or a flashback than a real story of Stan Fischler's experiences. I did like how it expressed the emotions of the people during certain parts though. An example would be how Stan invited hockey players to his son's hospital to help him forget, or just wait, for a heart to be transplanted in him. Stan expressed his feelings somewhat and how he dealt with it. The book also included how the Canadians felt their national sport, hockey, was being alienated and americanized. The book was a good read, but only hockey and sports enthusiast would probably like it.
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