Nhl Official Guide And Record Book 2005 (National Hockey League Official Guide and Record Book)

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Summary: The holy grail of pro hockey information
Review: Dan Diamond's annual traversal of every bit of information germane to the National Hockey League and its players is presented in this spectacular tome. No hockey fan anywhere should be without it.

The book not only contains statistical data on every player, every draft choice and every pro prospect out there, it shows every NHL team's draft picks for the past decade. No other single volume provides the wealth of information hockey nuts -- who are among the most driven and possessed fans in all sports -- want to know about.

I've been buying this book annually from Amazon.com the past three years after growing frustration pushed me away from my local mall-based book seller. Hockey is a great sport but so relatively few Americans follow it, compared to baseball or football, that retailers just won't make space available even for this, the holy grail of hockey information. Fortunately, the Internet and Amazon.com fill that gap splendidly.

I turn to this book regularly during Internet chats with fans of my favorite team and other clubs. Last season, my team traded for a young goaltender named Jason Bacashihua. I turned to this book to locate stats from "Cash"'s two prior professional seasons and his two years of junior hockey before that.

Someone with the age-honored name of Conacher recently took a position in the American Hockey League, which is to the NHL was AAA baseball is to Major League Baseball. There was a Conacher playing when I first began following the sport in the 1960s. I used the NHL retiree section of this volume to locate no less than seven Conachers that played in the NHL, including Brian, who played in Toronto and Detroit during the 1960s and 1970s.

It doesn't matter what you want to know about the NHL, it is in this book. No other book out there can make that claim. If you love hockey -- and what fan doesn't? -- you need this book beside you whenever the next NHL season gets under way.