Hockey Superstars 2022-2023

Sports broadcaster and author Romanuk again sticks to the adage, “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”, by maintaining the annual's familiar "sandwich" format in the 2022-2023 edition of Hockey Superstars. The “meat” portion again consists of 16 page pairs, with the rectos resembling oversized hockey cards that bear an action, full-colour photo of one of the volume's superstars.

At this page’s bottom, Romanuk provides the player's stats for the 2021-2022 season as well as his draft ranking and first NHL team, date and place of birth, position, shooting/catching handedness amd height and weight (Metric and Imperial units). The facing page 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’ left winger Kyle Connor reads:

“I always want the puck, whether it’s game-on-the-line or first shift. It’s no different when the game ramps up. You just get more into it and want it more.”

"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 Toronto Maple Leafs’ center Auston Matthews read:

DID YOU KNOW?
Aside from leading the NHL in goals last season, Auston also led the league in shots on goal. He fired a massive 348 shots on goal and scored on 17.2 percent of them.

HOCKEY MEMORIES
It was the NHL’s 100th anniversary, and the Leafs were hosting the Detroit Red Wings in an outdoor game in Toronto on January 1, 2017, in front of over 40,000 people. Guess who scored the winner in overtime? “It was definitely one if the best moments in hockey I’ve ever experienced. It was pretty special.”

Again, the volume’s entries are alphabetically ordered, beginning with the Carolina Hurricanes’ goalie Frederik Andersen and concluding with the Ottawa Senators’ winger Brady Tkachuk. Romanuk has discontinued featuring a seventeenth star on the book's cover. Instead, the cover photo of the Edmonton Oilers’ center Leon Draisaitl is the same one that is used in his profile within the book.

Though the NHL now consists of 32 teams, only a dozen are represented in this edition of Hockey Superstars, with just two teams, the Edmonton Oilers and the Colorado Avalanche, having more than one entry. Like last year's edition, players who are wingers and centers dominate, constituting eleven of the entries with the remainder consisting of two goalies and three defensemen. The book's superstars are a mixture of established veterans and relative newcomers, with players like Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos falling into the former category, and the Detroit Red Wing’s Lucas Raymond representing the latter.

Post-season events have impacted the contents of this edition of Hockey Superstars. While Johnny Gaudreau’s photo sees him wearing a Calgary Flames’ jersey, his entry correctly identifies him as a member of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the team the free agent signed with in July, 2022. Similarly, Jonathan Huberdeau, shown wearing Florida Panthers’ gear, is correctly identified as a Calgary Flame. He was a key piece in the July, 2022, Flame’s trade of Matthew Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers. Additionally, Nazem Kadri is identified as a center for the Colorado Avalanche, and he is pictured wearing that team’s uniform; however, on August 18, 2022, he signed a seven year $49,000,000.00 contract to play for the Calgary Flames.

The book's sandwich "bread" is again made up of two sections 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 new feature section, "Olympic Stars?", identifies eight outstanding hockey players from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, with that number being equally divided between female and male players. Unfortunately, only six of the brief write-ups are accompanied by colour action photos.

The reader participation "bread" portions reinforce that Hockey Superstars 2022-2023 is more likely to be an individual "home" purchase, but copies in public and school libraries will also definitely circulate well.