Why did Wayne Gretzky start every pre-game warmup by shooting wide to the right of the net?  Why do many hockey players seem to believe performance is tied directly to facial hair?  The Strangest Thing, by Canada’s best known hockey writer, Andrew Podnieks, explores the fascinating and fun world of hockey superstitions and rituals.



Praise for Andrew Podnieks’ writing:

“The detail is astonishing ... a stunning testament to the history of sports photojournalism in this country.” —The Edmonton Journal

“Illuminating…Serious students of the game know already to follow where Podnieks leads…his attention to and reverence for the game compares with Nabokov and his bond with butterflies.” —The Globe & Mail

“The author of numerous books on hockey and some of the sport’s greatest players, Andrew Podnieks undertook the most ambitious project of his career with Players, an exhaustive encyclopedia of hockey lore that will delight hockey fans both young and old.” —Read Magazine

Photo Credit: Mary Jane Nguyen

Andrew Podnieks is the author of more than 50 books on hockey, most notably 2008’s best-selling book on the 100th anniversary of the Montreal Canadiens, Honoured Canadiens, which has sold over 140,000 copies. He is also the author of Players: The Ultimate A-Z Guide of Everyone Who Has Ever Played in the NHL; The Complete Hockey Dictionary; World of Hockey: Celebrating a Century of the IIHF; A Day in the Life of the Maple Leafs; Canada’s Olympic Hockey Teams, 1920-1998; A Canadian Saturday Night; and, Portraits of the Game: Classic Photographs from the Turofsky Collection at the Hockey Hall of Fame. Andrew Podnieks’ website can be found at www.andrewpodnieks.com