Ice Time

Rocket has finally achieved his dream he s been drafted to the NHL! Following a great Major Junior career, Rocket is drafted in the NHL draft! However, the scouts still feel that Rocket needs some retooling to be an NHLer. He is sent to the AHL for seasoning, and told he should hit the weight room as well. At home, Maddy has applied for loans for her first year of university. Rocket assures her that he ll pay it all off when he s a pro. This changes when his mother is laid off and Rocket s income is all the family has and an AHL salary doesn t go very far. Through his training with the AHL, Rocket will face many challenges, both on the ice and in his home life. Will Rocket once again beat the odds?

As kids, we all had passions -- something we loved doing, experienced with our friends, dreamed about every spare moment. For Jay Atkinson, who grew up in a small Massachusetts town, it was hockey. When Bobby Orr scored the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup Finals against the St. Louis Blues, Atkinson became a fan for life. In 1975, he played on the first Methuen Rangers varsity hockey team. Once and always a rink rat, Atkinson still plays hockey whenever and wherever he can. Twenty-five years after he played for the Rangers, Atkinson returns to his high school team as a volunteer assistant. Ice Time tells the team's story as he follows the temperamental star, the fiery but troubled winger, the lovesick goalie, the rookie whose father is battling cancer, and the "old school" coach as the Rangers make a desperate charge into the state tournament. In emotionally vivid detail, Ice Time travels into the rinks, schools, and living rooms of small-town America, where friendships are forged, the rewards of loyalty and perseverance are earned, and boys and girls are transformed into young men and women. Along the way, we also meet his five-year-old son, Liam, who is just now learning the game his father loves. Whether describing kids playing a moonlit game on a frozen swamp or the crucible of team tryouts and predawn bus rides that he endured himself, Atkinson carves out the drama of adolescence with precision and affection. He takes us onto the ice and into the heart of a town and a team as he explores the profound connection between fathers and sons, and what it means to go home again.

Paul Bidwell dreams of playing on a hockey team but knows that his mother can't afford to pay for the registration fees or the equipment. So he plays boot hockey with his friends and practises alone every night on the open-ice rink in the park. When the flu and mononucleosis hit Paul's school and his best friend, Vincent, is laid up with a concussion, an opening is created on Vincent's team, the Wildcats. Paul finally gets the chance to prove to the other players -- and to himself -- that he deserves his time on the ice. [Fry reading level - 3.1]

ÒYouÕve never been here before?Ó Wanekia asked. ÒNo, Ó Chloe said. ÒYour father wonÕt fly. He never even told me about this place until he was delirious after that wound. IÕm glad he did.Ó ÒDo you think weÕll make it?Ó Wanekia asked, obviously scared. ÒDo you think theyÕll come after us?Ó ÒWe will make it, even if they do come after us, Wanekia, Ó Chloe said. ÒI donÕt think theyÕll pursue us all the way, anyway. ItÕs a long way to go.Ó ÒIs Father going to be alright?Ó Wanekia asked, looking back at Martin again. ÒYes, of course, Ó Chloe said, not sure of her words. ÒHeÕs been hurt worse before. The skinner is working.Ó ÒIt wonÕt even estimate how long, though, Ó Wanekia said. ÒItÕs done that before, too, Ó Chloe said. ÒHeÕll be fine. We just need to get him someplace safe.Ó ÒWe could have gone back to England, Ó Wanekia said. ÒWe couldnÕt, and you know it, Ó Chloe said. ÒThe way things are going, they could trace us through Time and then weÕd drag the Burnsides into this and theyÕd die. I wonÕt do that."

If you could travel through time, who would you want to meet? Lucas Finnigan eats, sleeps and breathes hockey. With his friends Edge, Swift and Crunch, Lucas plays on his hometown’s rink, dreaming of the day when he knows he’ll make the NHL. But lately money has been tight at home, and, after a major growth spurt, Lucas is forced to wear hand-me-down gear that doesn’t quite fit right. Now he’s not sure he’ll ever make it to the Hall of Fame like his hockey heroes. And that’s not the only problem. With the community arena’s chiller on the fritz, and replacement parts too tough to come by, it looks like Lucas and his friends may be doomed to a season on a plastic rink—or worse, no hockey at all! But with a magical discovery, and some help from one of hockey's greatest players (who was a kid once, too!), their final skate might turn into their first great adventure . . .

When Rocket gets cut from his AAA bantam hockey team, he needs to re-evaluate his priorities. Bryan Rockwood (aka "Rocket") is faced with the unthinkable: being cut from the Huskies -- the AAA hockey team he has played on for three years. With no other teams interested in him, Bryan reluctantly joins a AA team, the Blues, at his best friend Maddy's insistence. Things only get worse when Rocket sees that the Blues don't take hockey seriously. Facing the Huskies in the round robin will give Rocket the chance to prove his skills, but in order to keep his hockey dreams (and his friends) Rocket will have to realize that while hockey is his passion, it is not his entire life.

It seemed as though nothing could stop Jordin Tootoo on the ice. The captain of Canada’s Under-18, a fan favourite on the World Junior squad, and a WHL top prospect who could intimidate both goalies and enforcers, he was always a leader. And when Tootoo was drafted by Nashville in 2000 and made the Predators out of camp in 2003, he became a leader in another way: the first player of Inuk descent to suit up in the NHL. The stress of competition in the world’s top hockey league, the travel, the media, the homesickness—and the added pressure to hold one’s head high as a role model not only for the young people of his hometown of Rankin Inlet but for the culture that had given him the strength and the opportunities to succeed—would have been more than enough to challenge any rookie. But Tootoo faced something far more difficult: the loss of his brother in the year between his draft and his first shift for the Predators. Though he played through it, the tragedy took its inevitable toll. In 2010, Tootoo checked himself into rehab for alcohol addiction. It seemed a promising career had ended too soon. But that’s not the way Tootoo saw it and not the way it would end. As heir to a cultural legacy that included alcohol, despair, and suicide, Tootoo could also draw on a heritage that could help sustain him even thousands of miles away from Nunavut. And in a community haunted by the same hopelessness and substance abuse that so affected Tootoo’s life, it is not just his skill and fearlessness on the ice that have made him a hero, but the courage of his honesty to himself and to the world around him that he needed to rely on others to sustain him through his toughest challenge. All the Way tells the story of someone who has travelled far from home to realize a dream, someone who has known glory and cheering crowds, but also the demons of despair. It is the searing, honest tale of a young man who has risen to every challenge and nearly fallen short in the toughest game of all, while finding a way to draw strength from his community and heritage, and giving back to it as well.

When Shapiro and Bjelke sailed from Sweden to Antarctica in 1992, their goal was to be alone with the last great wilderness on earth. In fine prose and dramatic color photos, the adventurers share the storytelling in alternate chapters. 12 color photos. 304 p.