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Penguin to Publish Thirty Years of the Game at Its Best: A Hockey Canada Retrospective

Toronto, ON—April 26 2011Penguin Canada and Hockey Canada today announced a partnership that will see Penguin release a thirty year retrospective of Canadian junior hockey, chronicling the great moments in a program that has groomed the very best of Canada's elite players.

Tentatively titled Thirty Years of the Game at Its Best: A Hockey Canada Retrospective, the book will release in stores in October in advance of the World Junior Hockey Championships in Calgary and Edmonton (December 26, 2011 to January 5, 2012).

Over the past 30 years, Hockey Canada's Program of Excellence (POE) has attained a level of international accomplishment unmatched in Canadian sports history. The program has become the gold standard that other Canadian sports federations are measured against and aspire to emulate.

Since 1982, the year of its founding, the Program of Excellence has produced 15 gold medals, seven silvers and three bronzes at the World Junior Championship, including a stretch of seven golds in eight years in the early 90s. A majority of the players on Canadian teams that won gold at the Olympics in 2002 and 2010 are graduates of Hockey Canada's Program of Excellence.

The World Juniors have gone from a niche sports property to "the Canadian Super Bowl." The tournament draws the largest television audiences for an annual sports event in this country—in fact, outside of last year's Olympic tournament games, the majority of Canada's ten most-watched sports events in this country have come from World Junior Championships.

"We see this as not only a book, but a publishing event," said Penguin Executive Editor Nick Garrison. "It is a brilliantly illustrated history of hockey, representing every team, every season, every defining moment of junior hockey over the last 30 years. We see it as a lasting legacy and a book that will usher in some very exciting future projects with Hockey Canada."

"We are delighted to partner with Penguin," said Hockey Canada President and CEO Bob Nicholson. "We have confidence Penguin is the best publisher to Canada to handle sales, marketing and distribution, and to work with us and our corporate partners to deliver a book with the power to entertain millions of Canadians."

Thirty Years of the Game at its Best will feature a chapter dedicated to each of the last 30 years of the game. Contributions from players, coaches and Hockey Canada principals will take readers behind the scenes and tell stories never told before. Each chapter will include photo illustrations and a sidebar with the rosters of the teams, scores of games, leading scorers and tournament all-star teams, focusing on landmark teams and most famous Canadian victories.

Contributors include an A-list of players, coaches and journalists such as Stanley Cup and Olympic winning coach Mike Babcock, NHL VP Brendan Shanahan, NHL star Steven Stamkos, Bob McKenzie and Gord Miller of TSN, The Globe and Mail's Roy MacGregor, the Toronto Star's Damien Cox, CBC's Tim Wharnsby, Hockey Hall of Fame member Frank Orr and ESPN's Gare Joyce.