The Last Good Year

Praise

Nominated for the 2019 Toronto Heritage Book Award

“In the spring of 1993, I was leaving university for the world of sports journalism—expected to view the world with a more critical eye. Those NHL playoffs were the last I watched as a fan. There’s been so much written and said about this series that you think you’ve heard it all. Not true. Damien uncovered so much I didn’t know, bringing back all those memories. Awesome to relive them once again.”—Elliotte Friedman, hockey insider for Sportsnet, the NHL Network and Hockey Night in Canada

“To quote the great Bob Cole: ‘Everything is happening!’ in The Last Good Year. A historic franchise finally on the verge of returning to glory after almost three dark decades wandering through the wilderness, challenged by a team that seems to represent everything new and glitzy about sport in the 1990s, owned by charming super-salesman who also happens to be a crook, and captained by the greatest player of all time. Sounds like fiction, but it wasn’t, and anyone who had the pleasure of covering the 1993 Stanley Cup semi-final between Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings will never forget it. Damien Cox has done a beautiful job of weaving the times, the personalities and the games themselves into a multi-layered narrative. This is my favourite hockey book in a long while.”—Stephen Brunt, Sportsnet broadcaster and author of Searching for Bobby Orr, Gretzky’s Tears, and Leafs ’65

“Masterful. Damien Cox captures the detail and intensity of one of the most intense playoff series ever played, one all of us in the business remember. He knows the background stories and tells them in his usual style: tough, but fair. A must-read for any hockey fan.”—Brian Burke, Stanley Cup–winning NHL GM and Hockey Night in Canada analyst