Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean, Nashville Tennessean via Imagn Content Services, LLC
For sale: Baby skates, never worn. Had Ernest Hemingway been a hockey fan challenged to write the shortest, saddest story of all-time, he might have scribbled those six words. Alas, unlike boxing and bullfighting, hockey didn’t enrapture Hemingway. He made only passing reference to Canada’s favorite pastime even while reporting for the Toronto Star in the 1920s. Yet he did acknowledge hockey’s place in the pantheon of “manly sports.”
Some of Hemingway’s peers and proteges devoted many more words to the coolest game, describing NHL pros in novels, memoirs, essays and songs. From Faulkner on Richard to Wallace on Gretzky to Thompson on Roy, behold hockey legends judged by true linesmen.
William Faulkner covered a Canadiens-Rangers game at Madison Square Garden
While on assignment for Sports Illustrated, Faulkner experienced the sound and the fury of a hockey game at MSG. He noted the “passionate glittering fatal alien quality” of Rocket Richard; the “know-how and the grace” of Edgar Laprade; and an “agile ruthless precocious boy” named Bernie Geoffrion. That game, which was the Nobel Prize winner’s first, appears to have been a 7-1 Habs victory over the Rangers on Jan. 9, 1955.
David Foster Wallace praised Gretzky in an essay and cited hockey in Infinite Jest
Wallace was a “near-great junior tennis player” before becoming a verifiable-great writer. Sometimes, those strings crossed. In 2006, he wrote an essay called “Federer Both Flesh and Not” that compares the titular racketeer to other sporting icons, including the undisputed ‘Great One.’ “Like Ali, Jordan, Maradona, and Gretzky, he seems both less and more substantial than the men he faces,” Wallace wrote. But Wallace earlier broke the ice in his 1996 mega-novel Infinite Jest. It has 388 endnotes, one of which claims “toothlessness in hockey” to be a “perverse mark of competitive status.”
Mitch Albom co-wrote a song about a hockey enforcer with Warren Zevon (David Letterman provided background vocals)
Flying high off Tuesdays with Morrie but partly grounded as a Detroit sports reporter, Albom met with musician friend Zevon to craft a singular sports ballad: Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song). It tells of Buddy from Big Beaver, a hamlet in Saskatchewan near the U.S. “borderline,” who got his big break when “a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon (and) said, ‘There’s always room on our team for a goon.’” Albom based Buddy on Bob Probert. Months later, Zevon recorded the song with Tony Levin on bass, Paul Shaffer on organ and David Letterman on larynx.
Don DeLillo ghostwrote a novel about the first woman to play in the NHL
Before Manon Rheaume backstopped Tampa Bay in a 1992 pre-season game, Don DeLillo conceived Cleo Birdwell, “the first woman ever to play in the National Hockey League,” for his 1980 novel Amazons. The Mario Lemieux of living post-modern writers, DeLillo published Amazons as Cleo Birdwell before achieving mainstream success. Though fans knew his secret, he didn’t admit authorship to a wide audience until 2020. Amazons is out of print, and originals fetch big bucks.
F. Scott Fitzgerald based multiple characters on Hobey Baker
“I meet Hobey Baker,” reads an entry in Fitzgerald’s ledger from October 1913. Fitzgerald was a freshman and aspiring novelist at Princeton University, while Baker was a senior and hockey/football star. Prone to idolization, the former baked the latter into several characters, including Farr Tarleton in his unpublished Romantic Egotist and Amory Blaine (sharing a first name with Baker’s middle name) in his debut novel This Side of Paradise. Furthermore, The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan is who Baker could have become had he not died a war hero at 26. Among Baker’s posthumous honors are being the first American inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and inspiring the NCAA’s Hobey Baker Award.
Bob Dylan recapped a Rangers-Blackhawks game in his memoir
Songwriting is Dylan’s bag, but the Nobel laureate also wrote an acclaimed autobiography, Chronicles, which chronicles a piece of hockey history: “In the sports pages the New York Rangers had beaten the Chicago Blackhawks 2 to 1, and Vic Hadfield had scored both goals.” Though that may seem random, Dylan grew up “pucking” in Minnesota and, according to Clarence Clemons’ quasi-memoir Big Man, once listed Garry Unger, Bobby Clarke, Dan Maloney and Butch Goring as his favorite performers.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote impassioned articles on Patrick Roy
In 2001, the Avalanche were rolling, and their icy-veined goaltender transfixed Thompson, then a Colorado-based columnist for ESPN. He wrote two articles on Roy – “pronounced ‘Wah’ by most French people” – one concerning his arrest for criminal mischief and the other for a standout performance that Thompson had watched on TV with Zevon. Across both articles, the gonzo journalist careens from hockey players to bigamists to lynch mobs to lawyers to dung beetles. Finally focused with the help of Zevon, Thompson finishes Game 1 of the 2001 Stanley Cup final and calls it the “most dominating display of big-time hockey either of us had ever seen.” Roy got a shutout, Thompson notes, and inspired Zevon to write another under-the-radar hockey song, You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared. Unscared, Roy hoisted the Stanley Cup two weeks later.
This article appeared in the Jan. 27, 2025 Rookie Issue. Our cover story focuses on Dustin Wolf, the Calgary keeper who’s “jumped” in to help the team in its surprising playoff push. We also profile other sensational NHL freshmen: Macklin Celebrini, Matvei Michkov and Logan Stankoven. In addition, we look at some of the top rookies from the PWHL, the AHL and the CHL, and we preview the NHL trade deadline, with breakdowns for all 32 clubs.
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