I just finished reading Blood Feud: The Inside Story of Pro Sports' Nastiest and Best Rivalry of Its Era by Adrian Dater, a reporter for the Denver Post. My stepsons gave it to me as a Christmas gift and I waited to read it because I had a feeling it was going to be good. I wasn't disappointed. It's great!
Though Dater covers the Avalanche for the Post, he makes every effort not to be a homer and the book is very balanced. He details how both sides contributed to the rivalry and why both teams felt so strongly about it. Scotty Bowman wrote the introduction.
There are extensive interviews with Darren McCarty, Claude Lemieux, Kris Draper, Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon. The insight into the players' motivations was fascinating. For those of us who don't play pro sports or cover it for the media, this is the closest thing we'll get to being out there. Mike Vernon tells you exactly what was going through his head when he skated out to fight Roy; Darren McCarty tells you what it felt like to pummel Lemieux in front of screaming Joe fans. Highly recommended. My only complaint is that the book could have used more photos.
Now I'm on to finishing The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL by Ross Bernstein. This book's style is choppier -- it seems like Bernstein put a series of magazine articles together to make a book, so there's lots of repetition, which gets tedious. I'll give you a full report after I finish.
