Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, by John Branch
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Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, by John Branch
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“Shows us, in tender detail, a life consumed by our unholy appetites.”―Steve Almond, New York Times Book Review
The tragic death of hockey star Derek Boogaard at twenty-eight was front-page news across the country in 2011 and helped shatter the silence about violence and concussions in professional sports. Now, in a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, acclaimed reporter John Branch tells the shocking story of Boogaard's life and heartbreaking death.
Boy on Ice is the richly told story of a mountain of a man who made it to the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Widely regarded as the toughest man in the NHL, Boogaard was a gentle man off the ice but a merciless fighter on it. With great narrative drive, Branch recounts Boogaard's unlikely journey from lumbering kid playing pond-hockey on the prairies of Saskatchewan, so big his skates would routinely break beneath his feet; to his teenaged junior hockey days, when one brutal outburst of violence brought Boogaard to the attention of professional scouts; to his days and nights as a star enforcer with the Minnesota Wild and the storied New York Rangers, capable of delivering career-ending punches and intimidating entire teams. But, as Branch reveals, behind the scenes Boogaard's injuries and concussions were mounting and his mental state was deteriorating, culminating in his early death from an overdose of alcohol and painkillers.
Based on months of investigation and hundreds of interviews with Boogaard's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, Boy on Ice is a brilliant work for fans of Michael Lewis's The Blind Side or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. This is a book that raises deep and disturbing questions about the systemic brutality of contact sports―from peewees to professionals―and the damage that reaches far beyond the game.
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Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, by John Branch - Amazon Sales Rank: #389713 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.30" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .64 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, by John Branch Review “A haunting tale.” (Ed Sherman - Chicago Tribune)“Expos[es] the violent tradition that pushed this young man to the brink.” (Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe)“A thorough, compassionate, if ultimately devastating profile.” (Kurtis Scaletta - Minneapolis Star Tribune)“Meticulously reported and beautifully written.” (Bryan Cronan - Christian Science Monitor)“Anything written by John Branch is a compelling must-read. Boy on Ice is transcendent and riveting and his best work yet.” (Al Michaels, Sportscaster)“Fascinating and chilling. In meticulous detail, John Branch creates a blood-drenched parable for the hidden human toll of sports violence staged for our entertainment. The rise and fall of Derek Boogaard―quintessential NHL goon―is unlike any sports biography you will ever read.” (Steve Fainaru, best-selling coauthor of League of Denial)“A beautifully written and haunting journey into the jagged psychology of the modern athlete. It compels fans to examine their own roles in the spectacle and reminds us in often brutal terms that for our sports heroes, the real struggles take place far beyond the ice or the field of play.” (Warren St. John, best-selling author of Outcasts United)“Best Book of the Year. Branch captures the sorrow and anguish of a young athlete’s career collapsing…and asks piercing questions about violence in sports.” (Publishers Weekly)
About the Author John Branch is a reporter for the New York Times. His 2012 piece “Snow Fall” won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He lives near San Francisco.
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Most helpful customer reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful. if you love fighting in hockey By Andrew P First off, I can't believe I'm the first person to review this book.Second, if you love fighting in hockey, please don't read this book. If you love fighting in hockey, please read this book. This book truly is a book of contradictions. I can guarantee that you'll never look at pugilists dropping the gloves and putting on the foil the same way again.I feel the book does a very effective job illustrating the positives and negatives of life as an enforcer. In Derek's case, he dies at 28, but the years he lives involve him experiencing a life that he never would have experienced as someone who had limited academic attitude even before the repeated head trauma. (It's similar to a hypothetical question my friends and I have bantered about at the bar. Wikipedia has told us that two celebrities have come from the school our houses are districted to: Patrick Swayze and The Undertaker from WWE. Would you rather have the more years of the undertaker or the higher quality years of Swayze?)As far as the book itself, it starts with a great premise, but it's a difficult read for two reasons.1) The first is no fault of the author. The story that is being told is a real life Flowers for Algernon in that you become emotionally attached to the likeable character, and then watch the downward slide that you know won't be reversed. Each page comes with snowballing dread.2) the part that was under the author's control is that this book is an extension of an excellent series of articles, and it reads like it too. I think Branch realized he didn't have the content for a full-length book, so he threw in a bunch of filler, like I used to do to stretch the word count for high school essays. He feels the need to repeat himself several points throughout (he talks about Derek being a good guy off the ice so often it's like Rainman) and goes into unnecessary detail into the fights fought and pills taken (no exaggeration, play by play for most fights and a day by day account of what pills he was getting from each doctor. It reads like an academic journal)In the end, the format of being a full-length book might not have been ideal, and the content is at times hard to get through, but this is a book that has the potential to change sports. It poses the tough questions that can't be explored in a mere article, and helps personify the dangers of CTE and what the personality effects entail.If you're a fan of any sport with blunt head trauma, reading this book will give you an early insight into the future. It's coming...
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. Branch brings depth to the interwoven examination of the toll the enforcer role takes on hockey players,physically and mentally. By Bookreporter No matter how you choose to look at it, BOY ON ICE is an extraordinarily sad book. Any time you have the accidental death of a 28-year-old man, you will have a tale of sorrow, but it is particularly more poignant given the struggles he had as a boy trying to make his way in the hockey world.Derek Boogaard's tale is not one of great skill and ready-made success. Instead, his is the story of the shy giant, the oversized boy who sought acceptance, who took on the role of enforcer because coaches liked his size. He was intimidating on the ice, but reserved and kind off it. Unlike most enforcers, he did not resort to showmanship or flash. He merely did his job and took his licks. That he made it to the NHL at all was a surprise to everyone, though he worked hard to make that dream a reality. The toll it took and the price it made him pay are far too tragic.John Branch tells the life of Derek Boogaard with smooth and factual precision, which you would expect from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. Where he really brings depth is in the interwoven examination of the toll the enforcer role takes on players --- physically and mentally --- and he does so without entering into a preachy realm that could become a turnoff to certain readers given the hot-button issue of fighting in hockey.Instead, Branch relies on analysis of Boogaard's own medical timeline: the constant injuries to the hands that are never allowed to heal, the shoulder and back pains, the repeated broken noses, the lost teeth, the headaches and concussions...and the medications prescribed in extraordinary volumes to keep the pain at bay. By no means was Boogaard an isolated case. All those who made their living with their fists seemed to share this same path, including teammate Todd Fedoruk and feared heavyweight Georges Laraque.And, in many ways, Branch shines a light on the failures of the team medical community, as well as the NHL substance abuse program: multiple doctors who did not share information and all prescribed high doses of medication simultaneously, feeding his addiction; doctors giving him some of the medication he was barred from using during his rehabilitation; and repeated drug test failures that resulted in no further action by the program or the teams.If I had one quibble with BOY ON ICE, it was in Branch using Boogaard's notes and memories and repeatedly pointing out his misspellings. After a time it felt more like cheap potshots being taken at the hulking boy who never finished high school rather than using those notes for what their purpose was: to give Boogaard the only direct involvement he could have in his own story. Branch easily could have cleaned up those passages and explained in an author's note that Boogaard’s spelling was suspect and was corrected for purposes of the textual presentation.The timeliness of the book is twofold. For one, the NHL season has just kicked off once again, and so hulking giants like Boogaard will take to the ice and seek each other out, continuing the tradition of toughness that he found himself following during his time in the league. And it comes a mere month after the arrest of two individuals connected with Boogaard's death through the supplying of the powerful drugs he so desperately needed.The abuse of prescription medications, some illegally obtained off the street, the failed rehab stints in California, the alcohol consumption, and the postmortem severe CTE diagnosis all bring a heartwarming against-the-odds success story to a crashing halt. It is the Icarus myth made real, and all the more sad when you consider that so many people saw Boogaard spiraling and changing. Tragically, none of their help or love was enough to save him from himself.Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Sad, sad story of a boy from Saskatchewan By Gene Killian This is a beautifully written book about Derek Boogaard, a hockey "enforcer" for the Minnesota Wild and, briefly, the New York Rangers. It's really about an innocent, immature and trusting big kid who fell apart, aided in his demise by irresponsible doctors. An excellent read about a painful story.
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