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December 2000 Feature

Hockey the NHL Way - 
Power Plays and Penalty Killing
by Sean Rossiter & Paul Carson

I'm often asked at the A to Z, by hard pressed coaches of peewee & mite teams, to recommend books that will help them explain elements of the game to the youngsters in their charge. "Hockey the NHL Way" is a series of books that I have been recommending for some time.

The latest in this series is "Power Plays and Penalty Killing". It's a step by step guide to Special Teams with clear explanations - backed-up by photos, and tips from NHL stars. The book covers the various strategies for the offensive and defensive units, the roles of forwards, defencemen and goalies in both power play and penalty kill situations, and the terminology used by pros and coaches.

There are also plenty of full-colour action photos in this sixty page large format paperback which I'm sure will not only educate, but will grab the attention of young players.

Nottingham Panthers Statistical Guidebook 1946-2000 
by Michael Chambers. 

A special treat for fans of the Nottingham Panthers.  All of their statistics from the 20th Century in one book published by the author and covering both hockey eras : 1946-60 & 1980-00.

The book is available from : Stats Guide, 41 Brantford Avenue, Clifton, Nottingham, NG11 8LR - cheques for £7.45 (£5.95 + £1.50 postage & packaging) payable to Michael Chambers.

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November 2000 Feature

Powerplay magazine is now in its 10th season, thanks to the man behind the headlines - Simon Potter. Simon’s background, working for Peterborough Pirates - on their Hot Line, ‘doing’ the local PR work and announcing on match days at the East of England rink, was invaluable when he joined the Powerplay venture in 1991.

Powerplay started as a tabloid newspaper but when Simon became Editor, after 15 issues, he changed it to a magazine format. Over the years he has doubled the size of Powerplay to 32 pages and introduced full colour images but what really matters is the excellent content. The magazine focuses exclusively on British ice hockey, covers teams at every level of hockey across the country (by using more than 30 writers) and always aims to be "First With The News".

To find out more about Powerplay visit their web site.

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October 2000 Feature

There's nothing trivial
about Don Weekes hockey trivia books ...
Rockin' Hockey Trivia
by Don Weekes

 Greystone Books officially release this 122 page paperback in November but it can be ordered now from the trivia section of our bookshop - and, you will find more than a dozen trivia titles in that section of the A to Z Bookshop.

Don Weekes, a television producer and writer with TV station CFCF12 in Montreal, has written 16 trivia books but his trivia books are by no means trivial. 

In many quiz books, about 5% of the pages are devoted to answers ( typically in the q1=a, q2=d format). This trivia book is different - about sixty percent of the pages deal with answers to the questions posed. This very enjoyable book is a well researched collection of multiple-choice questions plus teasers, crosswords and quizzes. 

All of which give rise to some fascinating facts and anecdotes about the NHL, its players and teams.

The Christmas season is some way off but this could be a good stocking filler for hockey fans, whether they follow the NHL in North America or over here in Europe.

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September 2000 Feature

NEW HOCKEY MAGAZINE IN THE UK
Face-Off magazine launched at the end of August.  It's a 76 page full colour monthly magazine devoted to both Ice and Inline hockey. In the launch issue there are 19 pages about the Superleague and its teams, a page on European hockey, three pages on the British National League, six pages on the NHL and 12 pages of Inline coverage (future issues plan to cover the BNL and English League in depth).

There is a regular spot for a round-up of news and in this issue there is an article on the late Rocket Richard and the first of regular features on junior hockey in the UK, hockey movies and playing the game.

The magazine is well laid out, with lots of good quality images and there is plenty to read.  Once it has run for a few months we will take another look at how it is doing.

To find out more about Face-Off visit their web site.

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August 2000 Feature

As an information source and historical reference archive we do not try to bring you the latest news and breaking stories - although we do try to be as up-to-date as possible.

Two months ago we introduced the Quick Web Links panel to give A to Z visitors easy access to League, News & Statistic sites in Europe and North America. These sites do a great job of covering the news and we will review some of these sites in this regular feature spot from time to time.

 

BenchWarmer.co.uk is a well presented and informative weekly on-line magazine. It's free and covers ice hockey in the UK at senior and junior levels but majors on the Sekonda Superleague, NHL and British National League.  It also provides a weekly round-up of news from Europe.

The editor, Dave Hawkins, now has a team of over twenty writers and has just published Benchwarmer 34, which contains a dozen pages of news & views.

You can visit the site at www.benchwarmer.co.uk and while you are there, you can register to have the text of each issue delivered to your email box on a Friday evening - it's a great idea and provides plenty to read over the weekend! The website itself includes various photo galleries, desktop wallpapers and photo features.

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July 2000 Feature

The number of entries in the A to Z have grown rapidly over the last 2½ years and page access times have lengthened as a consequence. We are therefore in the process of extending the sub-indexing, already available on some letters, to cover the whole of the A to Z.  This work should be finished during July and will be implemented as soon as possible.

Due to the generosity of Jeff Nicholson we had three copies of his CD album BANG to give away. Congratulations to Christian Hartmann, Stu Loveday & Brenda McLeod who were selected at random from those who gave the correct answer to our competition. Thanks to all those who took part.

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June 2000 Feature

WIN A FREE CD

  

Back in April we featured a CD single by Canadian singer-songwriter Jeff Nicholson. So many of you visited his web site to hear the song HOCKEY, that it shot up the charts on MP3.com. 

We now have 2 copies of the CD for our FREE giveaway competition.  Just email us at BANG@graphyle.com telling us which of the 13 tracks on his CD BANG! uses the name of a Canadian Province (find the answer at this web site).

Put the name of the Province in the subject line of your email and include your name & email address in the text area.  At the end of June we will pick the two winners at random from those with the correct answer.  We will then email the winners to obtain mailing addresses.

Good Luck !

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May 2000 Feature

World Championship Pool A
29th April - 14th May in St Petersburg, Russia.

Keep in touch with the fortunes of Austria, Belorussia, Canada,
the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the USA via these sites.
Information as it happens @ 
  http://www.ihwc.net (the official IIHF site)
http://www.ihwc2000.com (the official Russian Federation site - in English)
http://www.ihwc2000.ru (the official Russian Federation site - in Russian)
http://www.ice-hockey-2000.spb.ru (the St Petersburg Times)

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April 2000 Feature

  HOCKEY!

Here's a bit of fun (and it's not an April Fool gag) - a Canadian singer & songwriter living in Tokyo by the name of Jeff Nicholson has released a CD single called HOCKEY!  If you live in Canada or Japan you may have heard it played on the radio. Apparently, it has also been heard at many of the major hockey arenas in North America.

Jeff says the song is dedicated to Foster Hewitt and is sure that hockey fans will recognize some other names in the tune.

You can find out for yourself by downloading the song at this web site.

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March 2000 Feature

 

The A to Z is a free access resource for ice hockey fans world-wide and in order to help maintain this resource we have joined the AllPosters affiliate programme in the USA - posters of your favourite NHL hockey players and teams are on sale at the AllPosters web site for less than US$ 8. Any posters or art prints purchased via the link above, or the images on show in our NEW Poster Shop, will result in a modest commission being paid to the A to Z Encyclopaedia of Ice Hockey, this will help us recover some of our running costs. 

You can also use the link above to browse the AllPosters catalogue of over 35,000 poster images on hundreds of different subjects. The sports subjects include Baseball, Basketball, Bowling, Boxing, Football, Golf, Hockey, Ice Skating, Sailing, Skiing, Soccer, Surfing and Swimming.

Other catergories include Americana, Animals, Astronomy, Astrology, Comics, Cartoons, Fantasy, History, Movies, Music, People, Science Fiction, TV, Travel and Vintage Images. 

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February 2000 Feature

"Total Hockey" is the Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League and was published in 1998 by Total Sports.

The bulk of the book (and there are 1,878 pages!) concentrates on the NHL, its teams, players and competitions.  The first 48 pages are given over to the origins of ice hockey and there are 68 pages on other leagues and teams in North America. A further 128 pages deal with international hockey and other facets of the game.

We often recommend the book to visitors who are looking for more NHL detail (there are over 1,200 pages on NHL statistics & players) than we could possibly offer, or want to include, in our on-line world-wide hockey encyclopaedia.  We offer many things that Total Hockey barely touches upon or ignores altogether, but if it's an NHL overdose that you are looking for - Total Hockey's the one.

You can buy a copy of Total Hockey via the A to Z Bookshop or direct from one of these links
Order Total Hockey from Amazon UK! 
Order Total Hockey from Amazon.com!

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January 2000 Feature

This is the Official puck from the 1998 Olympics at Nagano.

The company that had the contract to produce the pucks for the IIHF is called Gufex [web site] and is based in the Czech Republic. The company, which employs 38 people, was founded in 1990 and produces hockey pucks at its manufacturing plant in Vsetin, Czech Republic. 

The company has been a contract partner with the IIHF since August 1999 and is now the offical supplier of IIHF World Championship pucks.

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