Seahawk: Confessions of an Old Hockey Goalie [Paperback]

Bruce Valley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2008

Seahawk is a history of a championship New England town hockey team composed of WWII veterans, and a memoir of a boy's lifelong connection to hockey. At the age of fourteen, the author became the Seahawks' goaltender. The Rye, NH Seahawks were a dominant club, and played for a New Hampshire Class B state championship and a New England Class B championship in the venerable Boston Garden. Explores aging while playing contact sports.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Seahawk is one of those rare sports books that is about so much more than sports. Hockey buffs will certainly appreciate Bruce Valley's dead-on observations about this beautiful game. General readers who enjoy reading about someone's well-expressed lifelong passion will also find much to savor in this well-written account. This fine book reminds us that sport, when approached with the right spirit, can be good for both body and soul. (Michael Parent, Storyteller, Actor, writer--April 3, 2009 )

With Seahawk, the author rescues a great and moving hockey story from oblivion and, in the process, creates a world where sport and the lives of players are explored in exquisite detail with assured, writerly poise. A fine literary descendant of Jack Falla's Home Ice and Peter Gzowski's The Game of Our Lives. Like any good hockey book, it teaches us more about the world than hockey itself. (Dave Bidini, Author of Tropic of Hockey and The Best Game You Can Name, October 3, 2008 )

Bruce Valley's Seahawk : Confessions of an Old Hockey Goalie is a look deep within the living, beating heart of hockey. Written with a sense of authenticity and -- rare in hockey circles -- a genuinely intimate portrait of the game, Seahawk takes me way back, long before the NHL and Boston Bruins, to my early boyhood playing for fun on pond ice. Seahawk will evoke those memories in all its readers. Don't miss this terrific hockey book! (Bruce Valley's Seahawk : Confession )

Seahawk is a great hockey story, reminding us of how competitively the amateur game was played in New England, decades before some of us were privileged to play in the NHL. And Bruce Valley is obviously a goalie with a great heart. He may be well into his sixties but I'd play on a team with him anytime. (Seahawk is a great hockey story, r )

Former Boston Bruin |s Seahawk is a wonderfully entertaining look at vintage amateur hockey in post-WWII New England. Bruce Valley's inside look at the challenges of both goaltending and the aging process in sports holds nothing back. Living as I do on the New Hampshire seacoast and skating on its ponds with my children and surfing buddies, this book brings home to me how the important things in life do not change -- and reminds me how very cool life must have been in the long-ago era Seahawk describes. (Former Bosto )

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Peter E. Randall Publisher (November 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931807728
• ISBN-13: 978-1931807722
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back to a time when hockey (and many other things) were much more basic, March 21, 2009

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seahawk: Confessions of an Old Hockey Goalie (Paperback)

Hockey wasn't always the high-tech, indoor game that you see on TV today. It used to be contested on outdoor ponds, games at the mercy of weather conditions, cars surrounding the rink to provide illumination for night games. Bruce Valley learned the game under those conditions in the 50's with the Rye Seahawks playing goalie at the tender age of 14. He recounts those memories in his book Seahawk: Confessions of an Old Goalie. For anyone with a love of hockey and a sense of history, this is a great introspective read that takes you back to a simpler time in our collective history.

Valley grew up in Rye in the 40's, a small town on the east coast, struggling to survive in the post WWII era. One day as a youngster, he looked out the window of his house and saw something he had never seen before... a bunch of men skating on ice with sticks, batting around a little rubber disk. His father explained the game of hockey to him, and his life was never the same. Without much else to do in a cold New England winter, Valley took up the game with a passion. This adhoc game turned into an official team in an actual league, and the Rye Seahawks became a dominant force in the area. Valley ended up joining the team at the age of 14 for a two year stint towards the end of the team's existence. While the outdoor version of the game was drawing to a close, Valley continued to make hockey a critical part of his life and passion. Thru his eyes, you see a side of the game lost to today's youth, and a piece of history that was played out every winter in small towns all over the Northeast part of the country.

I really liked this book. Valley writes with a clarity that puts you right on the ice, temperatures close to zero, picking up the shovel to clear the ice for the next day's games. He supplements his stories with scans of actual news clippings that reported the game results, treating the team and the games as high-profile sports entertainment. All in all, it's an introspective look into what the game of hockey means to someone, coupled with a step back into nostalgia.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hockey, the old fashioned way., February 22, 2009

By 

R. Lilly (Durham, NH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seahawk: Confessions of an Old Hockey Goalie (Paperback)

Seahawk takes you back to the days before artificial ice, curved sticks, facemasks and arenas with creature comforts for fans and players alike. It spins a tale about the game as played by an amateur team of WWII veterans who return home from the war to their small New Hampshire town of Rye with time on their hands and energy to burn. It is a firsthand account told by Bruce Valley who is uniquely qualified to tell the story. As a wide eyed young fan there in the very beginning to an excited teenager pressed into service as the team's goalie in its final years, Valley brings the town, the team and the game back to life. Now in his 60's, Valley wisely didn't depend on just his memory of the events 40 to 50 years ago but carefully researched his subject and blended that history with his own "confessions of an old goalie". The result is a book that is not only enjoyable to read but easy to put down for a few minutes to close your eyes and see in your mind the pictures that Valley has painted for you. Let there be no doubt that Seahawk is not just another autobiography by a pretender athlete/author. Valley is the real deal as a writer and has actually made a few pretty decent saves in the net through the years. I recommend this fun book to all the athletes out there who worry about the day they will be too old to play their sport. Valley proves that you are never too old.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from Betsey Davis, February 18, 2009

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J. Lamie - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Seahawk: Confessions of an Old Hockey Goalie (Paperback)

Not knowing one end of a hockey stick from another, I was prepared to overlook this book about the sport. How wrong I was! In his sports memoir "Seahawk : Confessions of an Old Goalie", Mr. Valley writes simultaneously with a young boy's awe and an adult's maturity about the game he so clearly loves. Reflecting precisely and emotionally about his decades playing a game which has also been a consistent theme within his life, he writes with truly amazing clarity about his home town, including particularly vivid descriptions of New Hampshire's long cold winters and the stark Atlantic seacoast.