Stole This from a Hockey Card is a thinking-fan’s hockey book that strikes just the right note for those disillusioned by today’s NHL.

Chris Robinson pushes the bounds of both hockey writing and creative non-fiction in this hard-boiled contemplation of where hockey fits into a man’s life–whether he be a casual beer-league player who first embraced the game to avoid a difficult home-life, or one of the most celebrated defencemen in the history of the game.

Partly influenced by the life of legendary Montreal Canadiens defenceman Doug Harvey, Stole This from a Hockey Card probes for answers to how one of the game’s greatest defencemen could also lead one of the most tragic and mysterious personal lives. The book juxtaposes these investigations with the author’s own humble beginnings as a troubled youth who found escape in the cardboard identities put forth by hockey cards and by his own identity as a street-hockey hotshot. Another means of escape for both men became alcohol, a facet of hockey culture thoroughly explored by Robinson’s skeptical eye. Informing everything is Robinson’s scrappy-yet-meditative, harsh-yet-humorous thoughts on a game that so many Canadians love to hate, or hate to love.