? A Season to Remember, by Grant Kerr, Harbour Publishing, 231 pages.
AS both an old hockey coach and old hockey journalist, North Vancouver's Grant Kerr couldn't stop himself from chronicling the incredible action he was seeing during last year's Stanley Cup playoff run for the Vancouver Canucks.
As the Canucks went deeper and deeper his notebook continued to fill up.
"Every game I made a few notes," Kerr told the North Shore News last week, "just things that were of interest to me."
He didn't know it at the time but the Canucks would go on to the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals and those personal scribbles would go on to form the backbone of a book about the team's historic and, ultimately, heartbreaking run.
Kerr, a retired hockey writer, co-wrote 2010's Canucks at 40 retrospective and as the team raced through the 2011 playoffs his old publisher asked him if he'd like to write another book about the hometown team.
"Is it just if the Canucks only win?" Kerr asked.
"Win or lose," came the reply.
"Great," said Kerr, returning to his notetaking duties. The result is A Season to Remember, a blow-by-blow account of Vancouver's 2010-11 campaign.
Kerr watched much of it from home but other big moments played out right in front of him inside Rogers Arena.
"I had a direct line on Kevin Bieksa's twohopper in overtime. Alex Burrows scored his overtime goal right in front of where I was sitting. It was a fantastic spring and I'm glad I got to experience some of it."
The season to remember, however, ended in forgettable fashion for the Canucks as they lost in game 7 on their home ice. Kerr said if the Canucks were going to win the series, it should never have even gone that far.
"What sticks out to me of course is the fact that they could not win a game in Boston. I think every championship team - even though the Canucks did have home ice advantage - a championship team still needs to be able to win on the road because that is where you are truly tested. That, unfortunately for the Canucks, is where they came up short."
As we all know, downtown Vancouver erupted in a riot as the game wound down. In the book Kerr touches on the chaos in the streets but quickly moves on.
"I think it's been well documented in the daily newspapers and on television," he said. "It's certainly a sore mark on this city's history but you can't do anything about it, you've got to look ahead. I thought it had to be mentioned because it was part of what happened but I didn't want to overdo it at all."
Kerr acknowledged that his book, too, likely took a bit of a loss when the Canucks fell to the Bruins.
"I'm sure the sales would be bigger if they had won," he said with a laugh. It's still a story worth telling, said Kerr, who dedicated the book to "the real fans of the Vancouver Canucks. . . ."
"The real fans are the ones that stayed there and cheered Milan Lucic when he got to hold the Stanley Cup," said Kerr. "And they even cheered for Tim Thomas - they may not have liked it but they also knew what he had accomplished for Boston."
Canucks fans, however, are still waiting for their turn to hold the Stanley Cup high. A lot of pressure has built up over those 40 years.
"I don't know if this city can handle it if they won - I'm sure they would," Kerr said, laughing again. "The expectations grow by the year."
