After 27 years as a colour commentator for CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada and writing 50 books on the country’s favourite obsession, Brian McFarlane has quite a collection of anecdotes about the game. In Real Stories from the Rink, McFarlane shares some of them, many dating from before his time.

The stories are grouped together under such chapter titles as “Poor Play” (accounts of hockey’s most notorious underachievers) and “Between the Pipes” – a look at the enduring figure of the goaltender, a position that attracts the game’s most mercurial and superstitious players. Some of the funniest and most bizarre tales predate the creation of the NHL, when rules often had to be made up on the spot and many players hurried to games after their full shift at day jobs.

McFarlane also includes stories from the minor leagues and women’s pro and amateur hockey, including a small section on the career of Manon Rheaume, the only woman to play in an NHL game. Some parents may worry about McFarlane’s occasional tendency to make light of the game’s more brutal aspects. McFarlane seems to be aware of this and includes a disclaimer to kids saying that “extreme acts of violence should not be tolerated,” a message that might have been better delivered by simply ignoring such incidents as the murder of Owen McCourt, a player who was killed with an opponent’s hockey stick during a game in 1907.

Because of the book’s loose, anecdotal structure, readers need to come armed with a minimal amount of hockey knowledge. Together with veteran cartoonist Steve Nease’s amusing one-panel strips, the tales in Real Stories from the Rink form a rollicking minihistory of the game’s evolution from Wild West Show on ice to the slick product of today’s NHL.