‘On The Fly: A Hockey Fan’s View from the ’Peg’ by Wayne Tefs
Posted: March 25, 2013
Book Reviews
Reviewed by Geoff Kirbyson(published April 3, 2013)
Wayne Tefs missed the honeymoon in this detailed yet highly negative fan’s memoir of the Winnipeg Jets’ return to the city. When the Atlanta Thrashers were purchased by True North Sports & Entertainment in May 2011 and moved to Winnipeg, it set off an unprecedented love-in in the Manitoba capital.
But you’ll get very little sense of that in this book. Winnipeg had been without NHL hockey for fifteen years and from the moment True North dusted off the Jets moniker, many thousands of hockey fans were euphoric in their delight. Getting back to The Show was the culmination of a decade-and-a-half long dream for them and while an 0 and 82 record wouldn’t have been received with over-the-top enthusiasm during that first season, just being back in The League was enough for most fans.
However you’ll only get brief glimpses of anything resembling that sentiment from Tefs, who has published eight novels previously and a book of non-fiction. He provides a game-by-game account of the inaugural season of the reborn Jets but his endless pessimism and negative outlook on virtually every aspect of the season is frustrating to say the least:
After the 5-1 thrashing at the hands of Montreal on home ice, there’s now a palpable degree of trepidation in the city, a sense that we’ll be lucky to put in a good showing. Maybe, we hope, the team will not embarrass themselves. The puck has not dropped (for the next game) but the evidence is already there in the patrons of the sports bar: a tight smile on most faces, no chants of “Go Jets Go!” A loss by a goal or two will be okay; more than that will be another humiliation. A tie, a win, are almost beyond hoping for,
he writes.
Considering the Jets have been almost universally lauded for driving thousands of giddy hockey fans downtown on game days, this must have been a very isolated sports bar.
Readers will wonder whether they witnessed the same games in the same season as Tefs. Even when the Jets win a game, Tefs’ sounds like your dour uncle who complains about the beer being too cold at a family picnic:
The Jets have won two home games in succession, tied the Leafs on the road. That’s five points in the past four games, a better than .500 record, things seem to be looking up. But don’t hold your breath. It’s the Jets. Disappointment waits around the next corner, desperate as a mugger. Just get through the next ten minutes. That’s my mantra…
Even though the team is brand new to Winnipeg, Tefs repeatedly worries that “the old Jets” are going to show up for the next game. Those Jets have been in Phoenix since 1996. He has seemingly not erased the bad memories of the many disappointments of the first incarnation of the Jets, which played most of their seventeen years in the same division as the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames, who between them won six Stanley Cups from 1984 to 1990.
When he likens a late-game collapse of the reborn Jets to déja vu going back to a loss by the original team, he needs to be reminded that they are different squads from different eras. And really, what were we all to expect from the Atlanta Thrashers? It’s not as if they were the 1977 Montreal Canadiens.
This isn’t to say every observer should have consumed the Jets’ Kool-Aid last year. But the overwhelming feeling of unbridled joy throughout the city was evident everywhere but this book.
On The Fly also could have also used some proofreaders with a basic knowledge of Jets 1.0 trivia. For example, when the Toronto Leafs came to town last year, their coach, Ron Wilson, was not a member of the 1980s Winnipeg Jets, as Tefs describes him. Instead, the coach was a journeyman in parts of seven NHL seasons with the Leafs and Minnesota North Stars who carved out a nearly twenty-year career as a big league coach. (The former Jet Wilson is an assistant with the AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs and a long-time assistant in the minors.)
As well, Dan Labraaten was one of the second wave of Swedes to join the WHA Jets in the mid-1970s, not a member of the NHL fraternity along with Dale Hawerchuk, Morris Lukowich and Thomas Steen.
Not major errors, but if you want criticize your topic, know your stuff, particularly when much of your audience will know old Jets players, their stories and their statistics like the backs of their hands. And if you’re a Jets fan dating back to the 1970s, make sure you’ve got your reading glasses. The font size in On The Fly is squint-inducing.
There are no pictures in this book, which is too bad as once you’ve seen one replica of a game ticket, you’ve seen them all. In all fairness though game pictures from today’s NHL do not come cheaply or without obtaining permission to reprint them.
There is no question that Tefs is a hockey fan. Perhaps the best part of the book is the detail with which he outlines the activity in every game of the year. He attended many home games and obviously purchased TSN Jets so he could take in the team’s away games. Tefs sprinkles personal anecdotes about his own playing career throughout the book, ranging from long-ago games as a kid, to the beer-league game where he had a few teeth knocked out, requiring a trip to the dentist.
Turnstone | 280 pages | $22.00 | paper | ISBN # 978-0888014023
‘On The Fly: A Hockey Fan’s View from the ’Peg’ by Wayne Tefs
Book Reviews
Wayne Tefs missed the honeymoon in this detailed yet highly negative fan’s memoir of the Winnipeg Jets’ return to the city. When the Atlanta Thrashers were purchased by True North Sports & Entertainment in May 2011 and moved to Winnipeg, it set off an unprecedented love-in in the Manitoba capital.
But you’ll get very little sense of that in this book. Winnipeg had been without NHL hockey for fifteen years and from the moment True North dusted off the Jets moniker, many thousands of hockey fans were euphoric in their delight. Getting back to The Show was the culmination of a decade-and-a-half long dream for them and while an 0 and 82 record wouldn’t have been received with over-the-top enthusiasm during that first season, just being back in The League was enough for most fans.
However you’ll only get brief glimpses of anything resembling that sentiment from Tefs, who has published eight novels previously and a book of non-fiction. He provides a game-by-game account of the inaugural season of the reborn Jets but his endless pessimism and negative outlook on virtually every aspect of the season is frustrating to say the least:
After the 5-1 thrashing at the hands of Montreal on home ice, there’s now a palpable degree of trepidation in the city, a sense that we’ll be lucky to put in a good showing. Maybe, we hope, the team will not embarrass themselves. The puck has not dropped (for the next game) but the evidence is already there in the patrons of the sports bar: a tight smile on most faces, no chants of “Go Jets Go!” A loss by a goal or two will be okay; more than that will be another humiliation. A tie, a win, are almost beyond hoping for,
he writes.
Considering the Jets have been almost universally lauded for driving thousands of giddy hockey fans downtown on game days, this must have been a very isolated sports bar.
Readers will wonder whether they witnessed the same games in the same season as Tefs. Even when the Jets win a game, Tefs’ sounds like your dour uncle who complains about the beer being too cold at a family picnic:
The Jets have won two home games in succession, tied the Leafs on the road. That’s five points in the past four games, a better than .500 record, things seem to be looking up. But don’t hold your breath. It’s the Jets. Disappointment waits around the next corner, desperate as a mugger. Just get through the next ten minutes. That’s my mantra…
Even though the team is brand new to Winnipeg, Tefs repeatedly worries that “the old Jets” are going to show up for the next game. Those Jets have been in Phoenix since 1996. He has seemingly not erased the bad memories of the many disappointments of the first incarnation of the Jets, which played most of their seventeen years in the same division as the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames, who between them won six Stanley Cups from 1984 to 1990.
When he likens a late-game collapse of the reborn Jets to déja vu going back to a loss by the original team, he needs to be reminded that they are different squads from different eras. And really, what were we all to expect from the Atlanta Thrashers? It’s not as if they were the 1977 Montreal Canadiens.
This isn’t to say every observer should have consumed the Jets’ Kool-Aid last year. But the overwhelming feeling of unbridled joy throughout the city was evident everywhere but this book.
On The Fly also could have also used some proofreaders with a basic knowledge of Jets 1.0 trivia. For example, when the Toronto Leafs came to town last year, their coach, Ron Wilson, was not a member of the 1980s Winnipeg Jets, as Tefs describes him. Instead, the coach was a journeyman in parts of seven NHL seasons with the Leafs and Minnesota North Stars who carved out a nearly twenty-year career as a big league coach. (The former Jet Wilson is an assistant with the AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs and a long-time assistant in the minors.)
As well, Dan Labraaten was one of the second wave of Swedes to join the WHA Jets in the mid-1970s, not a member of the NHL fraternity along with Dale Hawerchuk, Morris Lukowich and Thomas Steen.
Not major errors, but if you want criticize your topic, know your stuff, particularly when much of your audience will know old Jets players, their stories and their statistics like the backs of their hands. And if you’re a Jets fan dating back to the 1970s, make sure you’ve got your reading glasses. The font size in On The Fly is squint-inducing.
There are no pictures in this book, which is too bad as once you’ve seen one replica of a game ticket, you’ve seen them all. In all fairness though game pictures from today’s NHL do not come cheaply or without obtaining permission to reprint them.
There is no question that Tefs is a hockey fan. Perhaps the best part of the book is the detail with which he outlines the activity in every game of the year. He attended many home games and obviously purchased TSN Jets so he could take in the team’s away games. Tefs sprinkles personal anecdotes about his own playing career throughout the book, ranging from long-ago games as a kid, to the beer-league game where he had a few teeth knocked out, requiring a trip to the dentist.
Turnstone | 280 pages | $22.00 | paper | ISBN # 978-0888014023