Book Review: Star Spangled Hockey by Kevin Allen

Published: 2011

Genre: History, Hockey

Kitch’s Rating: 8/10

Noted hockey journalist Kevin Allen – his co-authoring of autobiographies by Chris Chelios and Jeremy Roenick, who writes the foreword here, deserves a lot of credit – has gone deep into the annals of time to chart the existence of the world-leading organisation known today as USA Hockey. 

It’s a fascinating read for those of us who are unashamed hockey nerds. Allen does a wonderful job of profiling the big moments and the important names of Americans who have done their country proud at both international competitions and in the National Hockey League, which hasn’t always been a place stacked with American talent.

If you’ve read Chelios’ and Roenick’s books (as I have), you’re going to find some repetition, for Allen goes through major events like the 1996 World Cup of Hockey and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, with help from those two players and from others. It’s a rare look at some big moments, not just in USA Hockey history, but in the development and history of the international game itself.

The famed exploits of the so-called Golden Generation of USA Hockey in the 1990s and early 2000s – think the likes of Mike Modano, Doug Weight, Brett Hull and Joe Mullen, as well as Chelios and Roenick and so many more – takes up plenty of pages as does the obvious, the 1980 Miracle on Ice. Buoyed on by that triumph in Lake Placid, these were the years that America became a legitimate threat to win tournaments, rather than needing a miracle (if you’ll pardon the pun!) to get amongst the medals.

Allen has charted every Olympic campaign (including the other successful gold medal run on American soil, in Lake Placid in 1960, and the silver-winning squads from 1972, 2002 and 2010), organised hockey in America in it’s earliest incarnation, the career of Hobey Baker, some of the great players to win the Hobey Baker Award over the years, the wealth of talent coming from the relatively small, hockey-mad town of Eveleth, Minnesota and Chicago’s Yankees of the 1930s, the best American-born coaches, the 1998 World Championship qualifying tournament that featured retired players like Mark Johnson, college hockey, the rise of female hockey, success at the World Junior Championships, and, of course, some of the best American hockey families.

If you love the history of American hockey, from it’s humble beginnings to current day successes, Star Spangled Hockey is for you.