Review: Pronger’s pre-released Oilers contract drama prime driver of uncharacteristically dry book |
If you were hoping to read Chris Pronger’s true thoughts about his time in Edmonton in his new book, what really happened during his one season as an Edmonton Oiler, you’ll be disappointed.
That’s been published already by The Athletic. He’s already talked about it during his many podcast appearances.
Pronger’s book Earned: The True Cost of Greatness From One of Hockey’s Fiercest Competitors was released on Tuesday. But curiously, just a day before its release, he published an excerpt from it in The Athletic, saying he was intoxicated when he agreed to a five-year contract with the Oilers.
It was great marketing, a juicy tease to drive sales. Pronger scooped his own book, and there isn’t any more juice about the most public and acrimonious situation of his career, although he’s had a few.
For a figure who played larger than life at his hulking six-foot-six, 220 lb frame, who was a menace on the ice and undoubtedly a tremendous hockey player, the book is remarkably slight.
At roughly 170 pages — for reference, a much lighter read like Certified Beauties by James Duthie, published recently, is nearly double the size — there are just a handful of hockey stories. It’s not to size-shame. Lord knows writing a book is difficult, but whole segments of his career are skipped over, or touched on briefly, but not explored.
It’s not an autobiography or a tell-all. As Pronger himself has stated in promoting the book, Earned is “part memoir, part life lessons.”
He delivers on the lessons. The anecdotes and stages of his career, from choosing to go to Peterborough in the OHL over college hockey, the struggles adjusting to being a professional in Hartford, and the myriad of challenging injuries he dealt with, are springboards to discuss his “standards.”
After visiting with a sports psychologist in the mid-1990s, he developed those standards, and transformed his career from a bust and whipping boy in St. Louis to a Hart Trophy winner and later a Stanley Cup champion and Olympic gold medallist.
His formula of Standards Adversity Ownership = Success translates from sports to business.
There is value in that. The lessons in the book are good lessons.
But the book also feels like a summary of his highlights one could gather from Wikipedia, put in a blender with a Jim Rohn catalogue, with passages that seem AI assisted, and sis-boom-bah, here you go.
It took me 90 minutes to read, and afterwards I thought, “Wow, that’s it?”
June 14, 2006; Raleigh, NC, USA; Edmonton Oilers defensemen (44) Chris Pronger is congratulated by teammates after scoring the 1st goal of the game during the 1st period in game 5 of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals at the RBC Center. Mandatory Credit: James Guillory – USA TODAY Sports/Imagn Images
Pronger has always given the air of someone who’s going to say what he thinks, and if you don’t like it, that’s your problem. He’s got the resume and accomplishments to back up any opinion, especially about the modern game. At his worst, though, he seems pompous, never........