Attention, Rangers Fans: If you have a son, daughter, grandson or grand-daughter playing hockey on any level, I urge you to read Sam Jefferies' excellent book. It's called "Legacy On Ice – Blake Geoffrion And The Fastest Game On Earth," published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Blueshirt fans old enough to remember when Bernie (Boom Boom) Geoffrion played for and coached the Rangers will find this volume of special interest but it's more than a book about Boomer's grandson. As ESPN's learned commentato John Buccigross notes in the Foreword, "We parents know that real adult life, like hockey, is lived in the corners, on the edge, and there are few soft falls. Hockey is hard. The Maven knows all about it. I have an 18-year-old grandson, Ariel, playing forward for a Junior team in Palmyra, Pennsylvania and a 15-year-old grand-daughter Avigail, toughing it out on defense for Culver Academies' Girl's team. Stan Fischler talks about Matt Rempe. When Avigail's dad told me the other day that "Gully" suffered a bruise on her hip bone and a hip flexor, I couldn't help but think of Blake Geoffrion's love of the ice but, also – sadly, I might add – of the wounds he suffered as an aspiring NHLer. "They were in his bloodlines," added Buccigross, "the bruised and battered elephant in the room." But this splendid work of Jefferies is far more than a captivating biography about Blake, whose great-grandfather was the NHL's iconic Hall of Famer Howie Morenz. It's about raising a hockey player from his first day on skates, the struggle to "make" the kid teams and the challenges of coaches who simply "don't get it." Read it and you'll get the "inside" on collegiate hockey – a tremendous theater of its own – and its own captivating world. In the end, of course, the chief protagonist is Blake Geoffrion. In 2010 he became the first player from the University of Wisconsin hockey team to receive the Hobey Baker Award as the best player in men's college hockey. The Rangers' Jimmy Vesey won the Hobey in 2016 and I know that he'd devour and approve of "Legacy On Ice," as I did, a parent and grandparent of hockey players. Put it this way, I liked it so much, I hated coming to the end; Jefferies did such a compelling job.
