ECW Press, 2014, 424 pages

Expansion is one topic that has always been criminally under-represented in the NHL library. Perhaps it is because expansion teams are almost universally terrible, giving up bucketfuls of goals and accumulating losing streak after losing streak. Most of the players who play on expansion teams are far from being all-star caliber, and moments of glory are fleeting, not to mention of the most minuscule variety. So, many people don’t like delving into expansion history, since it ain’t exactly up there with the glory years of the Montreal Canadiens or Toronto Maple Leafs.

On the other hand, there are plenty of hockey fans, myself included, who enjoy reading about those fleeting moments of greatness, and who are growing bored of reading the same of stories of Hall-of-Famers hoisting the Stanley Cup. If you are one of those fans as well, Stephen Laroche’s Changing the Game may be of interest to you. If you are a Seals fan, there is even a chapter dedicated to the Bay Area’s first NHL team. In fact, every expansion team in NHL history has a chapter dedicated to it, including the Kansas City Scouts, Atlanta Flames, New York Americans, and Quebec Nordiques.

The early expansion teams, like the Detroit Cougars and the New York Rangers, were not built through an expansion draft, but by purchasing the contracts of players who, in some cases, were well-established in other leagues. Some expansion teams were pretty much uplifted from the Western League and brought over to the NHL, a far cry from how modern expansion teams are built: from selecting the best of the absolute dregs of the league.

Every chapter is dedicated to one expansion team, and each team is presented in the order in which it joined the NHL. Each chapter begins with a synopsis of each expansion team’s first season and is then followed by short biographies of some key players. Seals fans may want to pick up this book and read up on some of the key players from the 1967-68 season, including Kent Douglas, Bobby Baun, Gerry Odrowski, Charlie Hodge, Ted Hampson, and Bill Hicke, among others. There aren’t a lot of books out there that spend any length of time detailing any one Seals season, so the chapter dedicated to them gives one a good idea how the year went, and the troubles they went through.

The way in which the book is presented can be considered a pro and a con at the same time. I suppose how much a reader will enjoy the book depends on who the reader is. If you are like me and enjoy analyzing the finer points of an expansion team’s first season, then you will probably enjoy this book because the narrative parts are clear, and well written, and the biographies get straight to the point. If you are looking for more of a narrative history, however, you may be disappointed as less than half the book is in this style, and since the book jumps from one team to another, and one player to another, it can be somewhat jarring to always start a new section, and a new chapter with a completely different subject.

The player biographies can be considered a pro and a con of the book depending on the reader as the content is well-written and contains some interesting tidbits, many biographies feel a tad repetitive. For instance, Laroche usually mentions each player’s best games that season, but he does not go into much game description. In other words, a goal is a goal, and none is more special than the next. Laroche would have been better off including more anecdotes and classic newspaper quotes to give the players more colour and to better highlight some of the key moments of each expansion team’s initial season. I would have liked to read a few funny stories from the players who were interviewed for the book. There are also a few curious inclusions among the player biographies. For example, Larry Popein, who was not a key member of the Seals, has his own biography. It may have been better to exclude players who didn’t play a big role on the team and either expand on the biographies of others or include more players who played prominent roles.

All in all, despite its shortcomings, I enjoyed Changing the Game, mostly because I am a fan of expansion teams. For me, it was interesting to be able to compare the expansion teams who came into the league at the same time, but also to see how expansion teams have changed over the years. Had the Vegas Golden Knights been around at the time of the book’s publication, it would have been a perfect subject to close it out. We would have got to read about the absolute worst of the NHL’s many expansion teams, but also the very best. Here’s hoping to a new edition to a book that should be included in any post-1967 hockey fan.