The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team
By: Wayne Coffey / Narrated By: Kirby Heyborne
Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
Structural problem turns an exciting event into a, dare I say it: Snooooze fest?!?
Ya know, I really, really haaate it when I read someone’s review, and they think they’re writers or something, and they write things like: What the author SHOULD’VE done was blah blah blah. I mean, who do they think they are?
But I’m gonna go there cuz this could’ve been a really good book. Like, I was 13-years old in 1980 (I know!!!), bored and desperate for something to watch on TV and turned to the US v. Soviet Union hockey game. It’s not like I was a fan of the sport or anything; we in West Texas didn’t get an (AWEsome) ice hockey team until well after I moved away. But I’d watched the opening ceremonies, was waiting for the Figure Skating, had time to kill as my bed was made, chores were done for the day, so whatthehey!
It was asTOUNding! I don’t think I’d ever laughed, cheered, cried sooo freakin’ much, and the Gold Medal game, while thrilling, was nothing as compared to that Miracle on Ice game right there.
So I was understandably excited as all get-out to listen to this audiobook, especially since one of my favorites, the venerable Kirby Heyborne was narrator.
Snooooooze!
Okay so, like, the way it’s structured is that it opens with the funeral, a bit of the eulogy, for coach Herb Brooks. The Miracle on Ice men haven’t really been together since that winter in Feb. 1980, so this is a sad reunion. They are his pallbearers, they provide memories. It’s all very touching.
Then the book goes on to absolutely muuuurder the listener’s view about who the guy was as a coach, as a man. Cuz he kinda sorta believed in motivating not by the carrot but more by the stick. A heavy stick. A stick that also played merciless mind-screws on the young men to get the best out of them, knowing he was totally making himself out to be the force that unified the men in their loathing of him. So there’s that. Those guys came to love and respect him, but by GOD they really disLIKED the heck outta him!
And the worst part of the book is that it follows the game against the Soviets play by play, in minute detail, following each man who handled the puck and then? It JUMPS into that guy’s story; his childhood, his parents, his early career, and it even goes on into what happened to that guy after the Olympics. And then it jumps BACK into the game, play by play, ruining the momentum, until we come to the NEXT guy who does something notable and goes into HIS story. And on and on and on, player by player by player. It sooo totally kills the excitement.
I very much respect that he’s introducing the guys, but couldn’t he have done a game to introduce them, like the team’s first game vs. Sweden which ended in a 2-2 draw? It was a dramatic game as nobody expected much, well, they expected the US to be slaughtered, so a draw could be quite thrilling. Use the technique of a play by play with intros to the guys during that game then come back and give us the play by play vs. the Soviets. As it was, sure, we get to know the players (‘twas not all Jim Craig and Mike Eruzione!), and sure some of them have had tragedies or high points that we’d all like to hear happened to them following the Olympics, but. Oh. My. GOD. Coffey ruined a rousing, stupendous, AMAZING high of that face-off by interrupting it so very many, many times. We know he’s capable of writing a game end to end, in that he does that with the Gold Medal match against Finland, (And you KNOW he’s watched film of that a gazillion and six times cuz we get to hear about players coming together to tap their sticks—talk about detail!). So there’s proof: It CAN be done.
But alas, that’s what (I think) he SHOULD’VE done and he did not.
So there’s that.
Now let’s go to my fave Kirby Heyborne…. Oh my and oopsie! I really don’t think he was the right narrator for this book as this is a hurly burly jaunt into the world of ice hockey, and Heyborne’s voice is… quite simply? Too high and smooth. It was like accidentally buying The Boys of Winter, Young Listeners version. Cuz Kirby (Well, maybe I can’t call him Kirby after this review) can do YA like NObody’s business. Somebody with a gruffer voice. Better yet? Somebody from Boston or Minnesota!
Okay, so there you have it: Awesome event, but one tiiiiiiny (Like, the whole thing) structural issue.
Mike Eruzione just came out with a memoir, and normally, I’da been eyeing it cuz I truly did so enjoy watching the event eons ago. But now?
Well, I just fell asleep several times through the story, so all I can do is keep my credit and wish him well…
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