Quinn
The Life of a Hockey Legend
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A tribute to the larger than life story of a hockey icon and hero.
The hockey world mourned when Pat Quinn died in November 2014.
Tough guys sobbed. Networks carried montages of Quinn's rugged hits, his steely-eyed glare, and his famous victories. Quinn made a few enemies over the years, but there was no one who didn't respect the tough working-class kid who had fought his way to the very top of the hockey world.
He had butted heads with superstars, with management, and with the league itself. And he had also succeeded at every level, finishing his journeyman's career as the captain of an NHL team, then quickly emerged as one of the best coaches in the league. He gathered executive titles like hockey cards, and done things his own way, picking up a law degree along the way.
He was brash, dour, and abrasive--and people loved him for his alloy of pugnacity and flair, his three-piece suits and cigars, his Churchillian heft and his scowl.
In the end, the player who would never even have dreamed of being inducted into the Hall of Fame was the chair of the Hall's selection committee. That is Quinn's story: an underdog who succeeded so completely that his legacy has become the standard by which others are judged.
Told by bestselling author Dan Robson, and supported by the Quinn family and network of friends, Quinn is the definitive account of one of the game's biggest personalities and most storied lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this gem of a biography, Robson (The Crazy Game) makes it clear that hockey player, coach, and executive Pat Quinn was a storyteller extraordinaire: "Quinn often regaled his teammates with his tales of life in the minors and back-in-the-day accounts of growing up in Hamilton's east end. Hours would pass, glasses filled and emptied and filled on repeat, with the laughter as constant as hazy clouds of cigar smoke above them." Sitting down to read about his nomadic but fulfilling life might be a little less drunken and smoky but is no less entertaining. Quinn's death in 2014 leaves the narrative bereft of his voice, but family, friends, teammates and colleagues take up the challenge. The book is chock-full of fascinating, intimate details, from the razzing at the Quinn family table to the sparkly underwear a gift from his grandchildren that Quinn wore to the 2002 Olympics. Quinn didn't always reveal a lot about himself to the press, so this is not the book that he would have written. Instead, it's a warts-and-all epic that shows few could match Quinn's toughness on the ice (where he famously knocked out Bobby Orr), his swagger behind the bench, or his confidence in the boardroom.
