Legacy on Ice by Sam Jeffries
Blake Geoffrion grew up in an unlikely hockey spot, Williamson County, TN, but had three generations of players in his family tree. His great grandfather, grandfather and dad were all NHL stars of Canadian heritage. Ice was Geoffrion’s lodestone. He was courted by colleges with active hockey teams. He chose UW-Madison, and in 2010 became the first Badger to win the Hobey Baker Award for best player in men’s college hockey. Geoffrion was rising professionally—until a 2012 game injury cut his career short.
In Legacy on Ice, Sam Jeffries tells the story in descriptive, quick to the punch prose. Like the best sports writers, he puts the story into wider contexts, including the prideful importance of hockey in Canada, its slower reception in the U.S. and the imprint of labor-management relations within the sport. Geoffrion had great promise until sidelined by an accident while playing for an NHL farm club during the 2012 professional hockey strike. As Jeffries describes the blow, the sound from the rink was “not the thud of buddies crunching that hockey fans savor, but a sick chewitt, like a steel blade slicing into an overfilled tire.”
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