Eddie Shore and That Old-Time Hockey
By C. Michael Hiam. Published by McClelland & Stewart, 336 pp, $32.99, hardcover

The Ovechkin Project
By Damien Cox and Gare Joyce. Published by Wiley, 320 pp, $32.95, hardcover

A multiple Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP, noted for individual rushes, on-the-edge physical play, and being the league’s biggest box-office draw—that description fits both 1930s-era defenceman Eddie Shore and current superstar winger Alexander Ovechkin, each of whom is dissected in a new biography.

Curiously, C. Michael Hiam’s Eddie Shore and That Old-Time Hockey doesn’t discuss the Slap Shot quote referenced in its title, and many prospective readers likely know the Boston Bruins legend’s name best from that 1977 comedy. That said, this is an excellent, long-overdue take on the ground-breaking blueliner’s life.

Hiam, a Boston native, offers the premise that Shore was among “the best and most courageous hockey players ever to lace up a pair of skates”. Sometimes the author veers into homerism, downplaying the fact that Shore was also a true NHL villain. Yet by compiling seemingly every available newspaper clipping on Shore’s career, Hiam delivers a well-rounded picture of the path from Western Canada’s rough-and-tumble leagues to 1930s NHL stardom.

The book exposes Shore’s relentless individualism. He rarely socialized with teammates, and bought the AHL’s Springfield Indians against the Bruins’ wishes. (At that time, NHL players “were supposed to be subservient to their masters,” and owning a team broke the mould.) The future Hall of Famer also had unusual ideas about hockey. He contended that players should skate with their knees deeply bent, and stayed fit during the off-season by farming and swimming, while few others believed in working out.

Yet what Hiam captures most vividly is the outrageous violence of early-20th-century ice gladiators. “Lack of respect” in today’s game? Rick Rypien getting suspended for shaking a fan? Pshaw. This bio is littered with passages like: “one fan succeeded [in entering the penalty box] and pinned Russell’s arms to his side while Boucher battered him bloody with his stick.” Shore’s most notorious incident, in which he fractured the skull of Toronto’s “Ace” Bailey in 1933, is recounted with a focus on Shore’s distress afterward.

The Ovechkin Project: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Hockey’s Most Dangerous Player, meanwhile, provides a rather unsympathetic look at the Washington Capitals’ current Russian captain. Because it ends after the 2009-10 season, in which the NHL’s most lethal goal scorer flopped at the Vancouver Olympics, got suspended twice for questionable hits, and lost to underdog Montreal in the playoffs, that’s perhaps not surprising. (It’s like doing a Wayne Gretzky bio after 1982-83 and concluding: “This kid can’t beat the Soviets or the Islanders—he’s not a winner.”)

Veteran hockey journalists Damien Cox and Gare Joyce didn’t get to interview Ovechkin for the book, and evidently that grated. When they’re not painting the perennial first-team all-star as rock star–ish—unlike the ever-humble Sidney Crosby—or unusually money-hungry, there are some interesting insights into Ovechkin’s Moscow childhood and pre-draft years. Extensive, Pierre McGuire–like descriptions of selected Ovechkin games are sometimes insightful, sometimes excessive.

But forget Ovechkin—the guy who gets a hatchet job here is Team Russia coach Vyacheslav Bykov. Yes, his poor line-matching and failure to pull goalie Evgeni Nabokov early in Russia’s 7-3 Olympic loss to Canada deserves criticism. Yet to paint the multilingual, long-time Swiss resident as “out of the Cold War old school and”¦the KGB handbook” is hyperbolic. The authors claim Bykov was fired after the 2010 World Championship, and that’s incorrect: Bykov’s contract was extended this summer, through at least the 2012 Worlds. This is an interesting read, but no MVP effort.