Review: Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey

Kooks and Degenerates on Ice: Bobby Orr, the Big Bad Bruins, and the Stanley Cup Championship That Transformed Hockey by Thomas J. Whalen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I hate the Bruins. This will also be about ice cream.

As a sports fan of any sport, you find a team you love and everyone else is dead to you. Not that intensely but rivalries exists. The breakdown of the divisions in Hockey enables us to have multiple sets of rivals who we love to hate. I'm a Penguins fan. The Flyers and the Capitals are teams I will always root the worst for. I don't care if they have some great players. That's not how sports work.

You may be wondering then why I would be against the Bruins. They are no longer in the same division as the Penguins. I'm originally from Long Island. The Islanders were the hometown team but they haven't been good since the Eighties. When I was growing up the Rangers were the team New York cared about. I was brought into Hockey by a Devils fan. This is all very misleading, I understand. My point is even if I'm not a Hockey rival of the Bruins, as a person from New York I have been engineered to automatically think negative thoughts about all things Boston.

Also, when the Dropkick Murphys in their song Rose Tattoo sing the line "Black and Gold we wave the flag" I will always attribute that to the Penguins even though I know for a fact it is about the Bruins. You wore it first. We wear it better. Yours is also more yellow.

Why then would I choose to spend hours reading a book about a team I don't like? I love Hockey. I can spend many more paragraphs detailing what Hockey means to me but that will detract from the fact I'm here to talk about Kooks and Degenerates on Ice.

Reading this was similar to someone offering me Ice Cream. Let's say I told them that I was in the mood for chocolate but then was fed multiple bowls of vanilla. Over and over until I'm bursting. It's not what I wanted 100% but it was worth every single spoonful. Because what Thomas Whalen does here is not to simply tell you the story of one season of the Bruins but the story of Hockey itself. The history of the Bruins is the history of the NHL. Yes, the focal point of this book will bring us to the 1969-1970 Stanley Cup-winning season. It doesn't end there. It doesn't even start there.

I'm a sucker for exposition. Thomas starts the book by letting us know what was going on in the world which was great because I didn't come around until eighteen years afterward. Nixon as president is trying to pull us out of Vietnam. Ted Kennedy crashed his car into a lake which caused his passenger to drown and was a major scandal but not enough to do lasting damage to his reputation because he is a Kennedy. The Apollo 13 Incident occurred during this time. Muhammed Ali loses his titles and right to fight for refusing to be drafted to Vietnam on the grounds of religious beliefs. There are more movies, music, and sports references.

The book, while being focussed on the 1970's team, has a habit of jumping around. While talking about players we learn everything about them. Where they are from, who they used to play for growing up, what their relatives thought about their talent. It's very informative and for people who like to do deep dives for facts they can tell others while drinking at sports bars, this is perfect. I may not be a Bruins fan but I have a ton of respect for the great revered players of the game. Many of them happen to have played for the Bruins. Who hasn't heard of Bobby Orr, Derek Sanderson, or Phil Esposito? These are people that modern players are being compared to. Art Ross was the first coach and eventually the long time General Manager of the team. Art Ross! As in the Art Ross Trophy.

I've been following Hockey since 2000. I've never been a major sports fan. I flirt with other sports but none give me the emotions that I get while watching Hockey. Something about it clicked with me. There is much I still have to learn about the sport. I'm not completely out of the loop but I didn't know the significance of who Art Ross actually was aside from a great player. Same with the others. To me, they were names. Statistics to be beaten. What was great about Whalen's book is that it felt like I was there watching these players reach the level of greatness that we know see them as. By learning their trials, tribulations, injuries, and anecdotes I feel personally connected to this team. I wanted them to win that cup. Their battle became my battle. When all the pieces fell into place it was like magic on ice.

One thing in the book which I noticed was that we would start to follow a player in the current time period then jump into their past and how they ended up on the Bruins. Then towards the ends of the chapters, they go even further into the future. Sometimes far into the future. The main time frame in this book is the lead up to that 1970's cup win but also the immediate years before and after. By throwing us some information about the late Eighties, Nineties, even the early Naughts I found myself doing some double-takes. These moments of information seem rushed, and disappear quickly among the flow the rest of our story takes.

The acceptable what-happened-after does come after the cup win and we watch the team deteriorate in the years after. Trades, a rival league, health issues, and financial grievances lead our heroes their separate ways. Many find their ways back to the Bruins in one role or another. Other fresher talent also fills in the gaps but it is obvious the great Big Bad Bruin team cannot be replaced.

This was a great book. I enjoyed learning about the players, coaches, and the history of the league. Thomas Whalen also did something I would not expect. He made me respect the Bruins.

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