Hockey Talk is neither an almanac nor an encyclopedia, but a place where the language of the game is defined and celebrated. Expert Andrew Podnieks captures the unique flavor of hockey through the words that characterize it. Familiar English words take on unusual and often comical meaning when applied to hockey, as this exhaustive work shows. For instance, a puck is a cowpie, while wall rats are those unfortunate fans in the SRO section of the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. This is a must-read for both hockey lovers and language mavens.