Hockey Superstars 2021-2022

With the 2021-2022 edition of Hockey Superstars, Romanuk, a sports broadcaster and author, has maintained the annual's familiar "sandwich" format. Once more, the "meat" portion consists of 16 pairs of glossy pages, with the rectos resembling oversized hockey cards that bear an action, full-colour photo of one of the volume's superstars. At the bottom of this page, Romanuk provides the player's stats for the previous season as well as his draft ranking and first NHL team, date and place of birth, position, height and weight (Metric and Imperial units) plus shooting/catching handedness. The facing page for each of the NHL stars contains a two-column text that usually speaks to happenings related to that player's previous NHL season, and the page includes a highlighted and bolded quote by or about the player. That for the Winnipeg Jets’ center Mark Scheifele reads:

“I’d love to be a general manager one day because I’ve always wanted to be that guy who feels like he could mesh a team together.”

"Did You Know?" and "Hockey Memories" can be found at the bottom of the text page, with both providing brief snippets of information about the page's focal player. Those for the Winnipeg Jets’ left winger Nikolaj Ehlers read:

DID YOU KNOW?
Nikolaj’s dad, Heinz, was taken in the ninth round, 188th overall, by the New York Rangers in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft. Heinz had a long career playing in Europe and Scandinavia, and is now the head coach of Denmark’s National Team.

HOCKEY MEMORIES
“I will never forget my first NHL goal. Scoring that, on one of the best goalies of all time, Henrik Lundqvist, in New York at Madison Square Garden. It was surreal and amazing.”

Again, the volume’s entries are alphabetically ordered, beginning with the Calgary Flames’ Rasmus Andersson’s and concluding with another defenseman, the Montreal Canadiens’ Shea Weber. Romanuk continues to feature a seventeenth star on the book's cover, with this year’s cover highlighting Carey Price, the goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens.

Though the NHL’s 2021-22 season will see 32 teams playing, the Seattle Kraken’s lineup had not been established prior to this book’s publication. Of the NHL's other 31 teams, 12 are represented in this edition of Hockey Superstars, with five teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers and the Winnipeg Jets each contributing a pair of entries. Like last year's edition, players who are wingers and centers dominate, constituting nine of the entries with the remainder being equally divided between goalies and defensemen. The book's superstars are a mixture of established veterans and relative newcomers, with players like the Washington Capitals’ Nicklas Backstrom and the Vegas Golden Knights’ Marc-André Fleury (now a Chicago Blackhawk) falling into the former category, and players such as the Ottawa Senators’ Tim Stützle and the Vancouver Canucks’ Brock Boeser representing the latter.

The book's sandwich "bread" is again made up of two sections of matte pages which principally provide brief, point form information about the 32 NHL teams, opportunities to make predictions and to record player and team stats and the winners of a dozen NHL individual awards. Illustrations and text identify 18 referee signals. A feature continuing on the book's last page is "Future Stars?" which lists four picks from the 2021 NHL Entry Draft “who we think are good bets for success”: Own Power (1st) Mason McTavish (3rd), William Eklund (7th) and Kent Johnson (5th). Only two of the four players, Power and McTavish, are identified by a colour photo, but each of the four gets a brief, point form biography. That for Owen Power reads:

OWEN POWER

Defense
1.98 m (6'6") / 96.5 kg (213 lbs.)
Born: November 22, 2002, in Mississauga, Ontario
2020-2021 Club: University of Michigan Wolves, NCAA

The reader participation "bread" portions reinforce that Hockey Superstars 2021-2022 is more likely an individual "home" purchase, but copies in public and school libraries will also definitely circulate well.