It's a Hockey Night in Pittsburgh!

I know that everyone around Pittsburgh is all excited about the Pirates making it to the MLB playoffs for the first time in 21 years (as am I!), but as baseball is entering the end of its season the NHL season is starting a new one. And most important, Thursday starts a new season for the Pittsburgh Penguins. I, for one, am very excited! But I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this excitement. Pittsburgh has become one of the best hockey towns across the US and Canada.

Since winning the Stanley Cup in 2009, the team continues to draw fans of all ages. It's become very difficult to get tickets to Penguins home games due their popularity. Many of these fans are new to the game and may not know the great history of the sport.

I was first exposed to hockey through my brother Andrew. He started attending Pens games in the 70s. It didn't take long for our whole family to be hooked by this fast and exciting game. As I've written earlier, my real love affair with hockey, and not just the Penguins, began with the Miracle on Ice in 1980. After that I became very interested in the history of the game.

The National Hockey League was formed in 1917, but the roots of hockey in Canada go back to the mid 19th century. While its exact origins are hard to pin down, the hockey game that we know today most likely began in Eastern Canada in Nova Scotia and then moved onto Montreal, Quebec. The game was picked up by Canadian colleges and thrived as an amateur sport.

In 1893 the Stanley Cup was donated by Frederick Arthur, Lord Stanley of Preston, to be presented to the top amateur team in Canada. By 1903 formal rules had been put in place as to who could challenge for the Cup.

Professional leagues began to develop by 1910, with the National Hockey Association forming in Eastern Canada. The Pacific Coast Hockey Association was organized in 1911. By 1914 these two leagues were the only ones competing for the Stanley Cup.

Due to the antics of one of the NHA owners, in 1917 the National Hockey League was born. It's a little complicated, but Eddie Livingstone, owner of the Toronto Shamrocks, was not well-liked by his fellow owners. So when they had the chance, they pushed him out and formed a new league.

Not exactly a pretty start, but now almost 100 years later, the NHL has grown from five teams to thirty teams in cities across Canada and the United States. Despite a shortened season last year due to a lock out, the game has never been more popular.



For more on the history of hockey and the NHL check out these titles from the library:

The Official Illustrated NHL History: The Official Story of The Coolest Game on Earth by Arthur Pincus

Legends of Hockey: The Official Book of the Hockey Hall of Fame by Jim Coleman

Hockey: A People's History by Michael McKinley

Strange But True Hockey Stories by Stan Fischler





For more on the history of the Pittsburgh Penguins check out these titles from the library:

Total Penguins: The Definitive Encyclopedia of the Pittsburgh Penguins by Rick Buker

Tales From the Pittsburgh Penguins by Joe Starkey

Mario Lemieux: The Final Period edited by Tom McMillan

The Rookie: A Season With Sidney Crosby and The New NHL by Shawna Richer


Let's Go Pens! (And Bucs!)

-- Post by Tracy

World Penguin Day

As you may already know, I am a huge hockey fan. My favorite team is the Pittsburgh Penguins. And while I am still a bit sad over their early exit from the NHL playoffs this year, I was very happy to see that April 25th was World Penguin Day! My love of the Penguins came before my love of penguins. I went to my first hockey game when I was 9, but didn't start collecting penguins until I was a teenager. My collections has grown through the years, but it is still in boxes in my garage, even though we have been in our house almost four years. I'm still working on a permanent space for them in my home.

Many people think of an Emperor penguin, like in The March Of The Penguins, when they think of penguins (if they think of them at all!). But, in fact, there are 17 different types of penguins:

1. Emperor
2. King
3. Adelie
4. Chinstrap
5. Gentoo
6. Erect-crested
7. Snares crested
8. Fiorland
9. Rockhopper
10. Macaroni
11. Royal
12. African
13. Humboldt
14. Magellanic
15. Galapagos
16. Yellow-eyed
17. Little Blue

These birds (and they are birds) are only found in the Southern Hemisphere, although most of them do not live at the South Pole. (The Galapagos penguin actually lives off the coast of South America near the equator.) They range in size from the largest, Emperor, which stands about four feet, to the smallest, Little Blue, which stands about 1 foot. 

Penguins are excellent swimmers, which is why they lost the ability to fly millions of years ago. They spend most of their time in the water and usually come back to land only for mating season. Most penguins do mate for life, or at least for many seasons, as most people have heard. And both the male and the female take part in the incubation and the first two to 12 months of their chick's life. Once the chick is ready to be on its own, the adult penguins are off to the oceans to stock up on food to sustain them until the next mating season.

It's hard for me to say why I exactly love penguins -- other than it started as a teenage girl thinking they were cute, but now has grown into a respect for an animal that lives in a very harsh environment and continues to survive even when the odds are against them. 

Books:

Penguin by Frans Lanting

My Season With Penguins: An Antarctic Journal by Sophie Webb

Penguins by Roger Tory Peterson

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater

Films:

March Of The Penguins (2005)

Nature: Penguins (2007)

Frozen Planet (2012)

The Penguins of Madagascar (2010)

Surf's Up (2007)

Happy Feet (2007)

And in honor of my favorite penguin:

Opus N' Bill In A Wish For Wings That Work (2007)

Also, if you have nothing better to do, watch this!

Live broadcast by Ustream

 -- Post by Tracy

Miracle on Ice

I love hockey. I love everything about it. It's not like any other sport. There is constant action and excitement. And there is nothing like being at a hockey game -- the sound of the stick hitting the puck, a player being hit into the boards, the roar of the crowd.

Although I went to my first hockey game when I was nine (way back in the 70s), my real love affair didn't really start until a certain group of young men from the United States won a Gold Medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, NY. Of course, the moment most people remember is the USA defeating the Soviet Union on February 22, 1980, in what has become known as The Miracle On Ice. They weren't supposed to win. The Soviets were the best hockey players in the world. Arguably, they were better than any National Hockey League team at the time. In an exhibition session leading up to the Olympics, the Soviets had a 5-3-1 record against NHL teams. The Soviets also beat the USA 10-3, just days before the start of the Winter Olympics. No one believed the US had any chance of any medal, let alone gold -- and no one would have thought they would beat the Soviets, including the Soviets themselves.

But Coach Herb Brooks believed. He had been studying the Soviet style of hockey for years and he was confident that the group of young men he had chosen for the team were capable of doing that. He wasn't always popular with his players, but in the end they followed his plan and they succeeded. In a very famous scene from the film Miracle, Kurt Russell gives the big speech that Herb Brooks delivered to his team during that game.

By the time the US and the Soviet Union played on February 22nd, this team of college hockey players had already started to capture the imagination of a country. Most Americans didn't know much about the game of hockey, but with all of the troubles the country was experiencing at the time (American hostages being held in Iran and a crumbling economy), the team gave the country something to rally around and something to believe in.

The success of the US team in 1980 led to a huge interest in hockey in this country, especially by young boys and girls, who wanted to play the game. Back then, a very small minority of Americans played in the NHL, and today about 25% of the league are Americans. And even though the US hasn't won a Gold medal since 1980, they are now considered one of the elite teams in international hockey, alongside Canada and Russia.

There has been one major motion picture, one made-for-tv film, and one documentary about this event:

Miracle (2004) - Stars Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks in a very moving performance.

Miracle On Ice (1981) - This made-for-television film starred Karl Malden and Steve Guttenberg. Unfortunately, there are no copies of this in the Allegheny County Library system and it doesn't seem to be available on YouTube or Hulu.

Do You Believe in Miracles? The Story of the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team (2001) - This is an HBO documentary narrated by Liev Schrieber.


And if you are looking for something to read, in addition to the DVDs:

The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team by Wayne Coffey

Going For the Gold: How the U.S Olympic Hockey Team Won at Lake Placid by Tim Wendel

Miracle on Ice by Alan Pierce


-- Post by Tracy