Review: <em>Go to the Net</em>

Go to the Net

Go to the Net: Eight Goals That Changed the Game

by Al Strachan

In my sophomore year of college, I took a year-long history class that many might consider unconventional. It was broad, beginning with the ancient Greeks in August and finishing with twentieth century America in early May. As you can imagine, our trip through time was quick: the goal was not to learn about people and places (though we did), but to understand how and why history is written.

The biggest lesson was this: historical accounts are never objective. Every story has two sides (at least), and every historian writes to communicate something. No historical account is ever “just the facts”; it’s always, “Here are the facts, and this is what they teach.” If you pretend that history is objective, then you may misunderstand its lessons or worse, blindly accept false ones.

Which brings us to Go to the Net. I’m convinced that if hockey is still around in 100 years, and if people want to understand what hockey was like at the turn of the twenty-first century, this book will prove invaluable. It’s unashamedly subjective and charts a storyline that not everyone would agree with, which is pretty much why I think that it’s a book every hockey fan should read.

Written during the infamous 2004-05 NHL lockout, Strachan’s book is as much diagnosis as it is history. His diagnosis is generally subtle—his goal is not to solve the NHL’s problems. However, he clearly believes that the storyline of Canadian hockey from the 1970s to the 2000s offers lessons that cannot be ignored.

Yes, Canadian hockey. Strachan is, after all, a Canadian journalist who is primarily concerned about the state of Canada’s game. What he charts here is its growth from a lesser-skilled game relying too heavily on violence (the kind that Bobby Clarke fabulously displayed in the 1972 Summit Series). Each goal marks a pivotal moment—some disappointing, some joyous, but all full of backstory and significant context. These are only eight goals, but they are eight goals that tell an awful lot about Canadian hockey’s ups and downs, and give some insight into its future.

Perhaps I’m making this book sound too lofty. That’s really the last thing I want to do. Go to the Net is a simple book in the best possible sense. It’s meant for the average hockey fan, not scholastic types. Strachan does provoke thought and ask some wonderful questions, but he’s primarily telling stories. What’s more, he writes as an observer—he witnessed most of what he describes in this book and managed to interview people like Don Cherry and Scotty Bowman (among others) to fill out what he didn’t.

You may disagree with Strachan’s conclusions. If you’re American, you may be annoyed by his Canadian focus (though he’s not one to take pride in being not-American). But I’m willing to bet that you’d still find this book entertaining and still find his questions worth pondering.