Non-Fiction: Celebrating the 2010-2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks by Andrew Podnieks

Considering the way it all turned out -- cars on fire and a city in shame -- some would say the Vancouver Canucks hockey club doesn’t have anything to celebrate about their most recent season. Those people would be wrong. One could argue that, though the season ended in flames, none of that really had anything to do with the hockey team who were -- at fire time -- likely still in their dressing rooms, crying -- at it were -- in their beers. Still, there was a great deal to celebrate. As we are told in the introduction to Celebrating the 2010-2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks (Fenn/M&S):

It’s one thing to start the year as a Stanley Cup favorite, and another thing altogether to get to game seven of the Stanley Cup Final after many exhibition games, eighty-two games in the regular season, and four grueling rounds of the playoffs.

After all, it’s not their fault that some of their local fans are -- well -- hot heads. Overall, they played a lot of terrific hockey throughout a punishing season. “Not the desired ending,” as the book says, “but 2010-11 was a wild ride all the same.”

This book commemorates that, with stats, photos, team member biographies: basically everything a fan would want. This is one of the first books from Fenn/M&S, the new McClelland & Stewart imprint that seemed to be more or less created as a consolation prize for Jordan Fenn earlier this year when HB Fenn, the family publishing and distribution company he was running, slid into receivership. It was unclear at the time the story broke if the rights to hockey related titles HB Fenn had published were to be part of the deal Jordan Fenn made with M&S. Certainly, though, author Andrew Podnieks, produced a book similar to this one for the 2009-10 season but The Year of the Blackhawks: Celebrating Chicago’s 2009-10 Stanley Cup Championship Season was published by HB Fenn.

Whatever the case, it’s all good news for hockey fans who, for the most part, are unlikely to care whose name is on the spine or even the cover. Produced under license to the NHL, Celebrating the 2010-2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks delivers the goods on what was a grueling and mostly rewarding season for Canada’s westernmost hockey team.