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But to his credit, Lawrence Scanlan knows his hockey and its history. He breaks rank with the revisionists and nostalgists who claim hockey was all grace and ice dancing in years past. His exhaustive research provides ample evidence that many of today's problems, from violence to stifling defense to the dreaded "American influence," have been around since the first puck was dropped.

"Grace Under Fire" is at its best when tracing the history of fighting and dirty work as essential hockey tactics. But Scanlan casts his net much wider, seeking to plumb greater depths, to examine the "yin and yang" of hockey. Under this broad mandate the book falls apart, reduced to a muddle of pointless anecdotes, circuitous arguments and turgid metaphysical forays.

Scanlan seems determined to include all his research. But journeys to the women's world championship and a hockey conference don't reveal much. Stories from his rec league or his son's minor hockey games are of marginal interest. An entire chapter on "Writers and the Game" does little more than argue that smart people can be hockey fans. Like so many recent hockey books, Scanlan's could easily lose 50 or 75 pages. Perhaps economy is not a valued quality among sports writers.

Even when maintaining his focus, Scanlan fails to make a cogent case. He abhors violence, of course, but seems to approve of hard-nosed heroes like Doug Gilmour and Wendel Clark. In one chapter he advocates the good, clean body check. In another he sympathetically quotes a doctor who condemns the NHL by saying, "The owners want collisions."

A clean, well-played game without fighting or stickwork can still be brutally physical, as Scanlan well knows. But he dances around the issue. Discussing the Ottawa Senators' perceived lack of "grit" in a recent playoff series, Scanlan sniffs that NHL hockey is game in which victory goes "not to the swiftest and cleverest but to those most able to stomach hand-to-hand combat." There is a strained leap of logic here: equating physical hockey with "hand-to-hand combat." Note as well the use of a loaded military metaphor to add weight to an argument when the evidence is unconvincing or contradictory.

Ultimately Scanlan comes off as an ambivalent but high-minded reformer. "Is it possible to be an astute observer of the game and enjoy the fisticuffs?" he asks at one point. "I doubt it." No case is made for this claim, leaving the reader to conclude that the writer is just a snob. Those who cheer the fights are dismissed as bloodthirsty louts, beneath the contempt of "astute observers" like himself.

In one his most telling passages, Scanlan worries that he is imposing his "high seriousness" about the game on his son. ("It's like the sour smell that invades the inner leather of elbow pads," he writes, in one of the book's many lumpy similes.) He is right to worry. Despite frequent claims that hockey has brought him much joy, the solemn, earnest tone of this book suggests that Scanlan would rather sit in judgement than enjoy himself. He certainly doesn't sound like much fun to watch a game with.