Great Goaltenders
Stars of Hockeys Golden Age
AUTHOR: Jim Barber
FORMAT: 5.5 x 8.5 pb / pages
ISBN-10: 1554390842
ISBN-13: 9781554390847
In the golden age of hockey, the net was a place of grace, agility, and innovation. Goaltenders deflected and blocked with creativity, stickhandled with bold strokes, and fearlessly faced a puck travelling at speeds of 100 miles an hour. And, they took a beating. Some of these stars made their saves before the mask; others got their shut-outs without padded blockers or trappers. This is an exhilarating chronicle of the quiet guardians of the crease.
Prologue
The war-weary fans who crammed into the arena in Halifax had seen a lot since the fall of 1939. For nearly five years, the city witnessed tens of thousands of Canadian soldiers, seamen, and flyers leave port to risk life and limb in battles in the Atlantic Ocean, the fields of France, the deserts of North Africa, and the skies over London.
But they hadnąt seen the likes of Chuck Rayner before. Playing for an Air Force team, the netminder was tall, almost lanky. He had the reputation of thrilling fans with his propensity to wander from his crease to play the puck. Sometimes he barely got there before an onrushing forward swept it up.
On this night, the action was particularly hot and heavy, with great scoring chances at both ends of the ice. Rayner had made save after spectacular save. With teams comprising mainly solid amateur players, the quality of the hockey was decent, but a little ragged compared with the tempered ferocity and flashy brilliance of the National Hockey League that Rayner was used to.
Late in the game, the puck caromed back into Raynerąs end of the ice. He rushed out of his crease to deflect the shot into the corner. Practically every skater from both teams followed it into the corner. Sticks banged, and players hooted and hollered as the frozen rubber disc somehow managed to squirt from the melee.
Rayner had moved away from the crowd, and found himself in possession of the puck - alone and unfettered.
Placing both his blocker and gloved hand on his heavy goal stick, the smooth-skating netminder began to glide down the ice. By the time the other players noticed what was happening, Rayner had crossed centre ice, and was showing no signs of stopping. Memories of playing keep-away on the frozen prairie ponds and sloughs of his youth came flooding back.
At first bewildered by what they were witnessing, fans in Halifax soon began to stand and cheer. However improbable, his daring feat caught the imagination of the crowd, which roared its approval. With the clamour of the fans ringing in his ears, Rayner burst into the other team's end. Without hesitation, he launched a deceptively hard, and surprisingly accurate shot on the befuddled netminder. The roar became deafening when the twine at the back of the net bulged.
Once the shock wore off, Rayner's teammates clustered around him, patting him on the backside, mussing his hair. Rayner simply skated back down the ice, and readied himself for the next play. In a time when newspaper headlines were dominated with tales of bloodshed and woe, Chuck Rayner's exploits on a hockey rink brought a little bit of fun back into everyone's life.
Chuck Rayner had defied tradition, logic, and his coaches with his bold burst up the ice. It wasn't the first time that he amazed and astonished a crowd, and it wouldn't be the last.
About the Author
Jim Barber managed to find time to write this book while working as the Sports and Arts Editor for The Barrie Advance, and as the Editor for the Collingwood-Wasaga Beach Connection, two community newspapers in Central Ontario. Jim is a recipient of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association Award for Sportswriting and a Canadian Community Newspaper Award for editorial writing. Educated at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. and Toronto's Centennial College, he has had a passion (obsession?) for hockey and hockey history most of his adult life. The books of Scott Young and Brian McFarlane inspired him as a youth, as do the works of Andrew Podnieks, Douglas Hunter, and Bruce Dowbiggin today. A member of the Society for International Hockey Research, current chairman of the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame Society, and executive member of the Collingwood Historical Society, Jim lives in a very old house, in a very small village called Nottawa, a few kilometers from the shores of Georgian Bay, near Collingwood, Ontario. He has a beautiful wife, two great stepsons, a somewhat annoying but loveable dog, an unnatural affinity for odd hockey stuff, and way too many books on his bookshelves.
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