Last-minute gift ideas for people you forgot about until just now

How's your Christmas shopping going? Oh, you say you're all done? Get out of here, you weirdo. Go be thoughtful and organized with your own kind. Freak.

For the rest of us, this about the time of year when you're thinking about getting started, even though it's already too late. If that's you, I'm here to help, with a pair of last-minute gift ideas.

The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL

The book is now available in paperback, and if you order it from Amazon or somewhere with fast shipping, you can still get it in time for Christmas. You could also probably go outside and find a store if that's a thing that people still do. Either way, it's a great gift for any hockey and/or history fans on your list. And it's also available in e-book format, or even as an audiobook. Give the gift of me talking for eight hours in a voice that's been described as somehow both more and less Canadian than you thought it would be.

Here are the links:

• Amazon Canada
  
• Amazon USA
  

(The old Best of DGB book is still available, and in Canada at least it will arrive before Christmas too.)

A gift subscription to The Athletic

If you know somebody who'd like to read my stuff on The Athletic, or the stuff of one of the dozens of other excellent hockey writers on the site, or really the stuff of pretty much any sportswriter these days, consider a gift subscription. You can do as little as three months for $20, or a full year $40, which works out to a 33% discount. You can print off a gift notice, or have one delivered by email on a date of your choosing, so it won't ruin the surprise. Here's the link.

Or you can get everyone socks. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

Either way, thanks again for your continued support in 2019, and here's looking forward to 2020.

Book excerpt: How the Broadway Bullies kept Gordie Howe from becoming a Ranger

Gordie Howe played an astounding 25 years for the Detroit Red Wings, easily the longest tenure by any player with a single team. He retired in 1971, having just turned forty-three, and then made a comeback two years later with the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association. That match made sense — it gave the fledgling WHA a big name to sell while also giving Howe a chance to play with his sons Marty and Mark — but it was jarring for hockey fans. Gordie Howe in anything other than a Red Wings jersey? It seemed plain wrong.

Well, if you think the sight of a silver-haired Howe in Aeros blue (or, later, Whalers green) must’ve been odd, try to imagine him in his prime, wearing the red, white and blue of the New York Rangers. It nearly happened.

The Rangers were the first NHL team to see something in Howe. Specifically, it was scout Fred McCorry who spotted a fifteen-year-old Howe in Saskatoon back in 1943 and convinced him to come to the Rangers’ training camp. In those days, it wasn’t unheard of for teams to sign players that young, locking in their rights well before they would ever skate in the NHL. The invitation represented a fantastic opportunity for Howe, but it made for a different experience. While we remember Howe as one of the most fearsome players ever to take the ice, he was shy and introverted as a teenager, and he struggled with being away from home. To make matters worse, the Rangers’ veterans decided to give the new kid a hard time. They made fun of him for not knowing how to put his equipment on properly (he’d never owned a full set) and stole his food when it was mealtime. Howe was miserable, and eventually he decided he’d had enough. The future Mr. Hockey walked away from camp and headed back home to Saskatoon.

Later that winter, Red Wings scout Fred Pinckney got a look at Howe and invited him to Detroit’s off-season camp in Windsor, Ontario. This time, the veterans left the kid well enough alone, and Detroit coach Jack Adams liked what he saw. The Red Wings offered Howe a contract and he agreed.

How does hockey history change if those 1943 Rangers ease up on a nervous teenager? It makes for another one of those great “what if?” arguments — although in this case, it’s probably one that Red Wings fans would rather not think about.

Ironically, Howe’s younger brother Vic had a brief NHL career of his own in the 1950s, scoring three goals in thirty-three games spread across three seasons … all of them with the New York Rangers.

Excerpted from “The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL”; by Sean McIndoe. Copyright © 2018 Sean McIndoe. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

>> This excerpt originally appeared at The Athletic