Jews in Sports: Literary and Ice Worlds Collide

The road to National Hockey League fame and glory is often pock-marked by a myriad of stories among prospects and players alike in the manner for how each reached the summit of the ice sport, sprinkled in with a few interesting tidbits along the way.

Like already-published authors – and current and former NHL player Scott Hartnell and Sheldon Kennedy respectively before him – Florida Panthers’ prospect Zach Hyman will soon join the paper ranks, courtesy of Random House.

The two children’s books that Hyman compiled are heading to print this year and are titled, “The Bambino and Me” and “Hockey Hero”.

The former is set in the 1920’s New York and tells of a young Yankees fan named George who appreciates Babe Ruth and he means so much to him and his favorite team he always carried around his baseball card wherever he goes.

The latter is about a young hockey player who overcomes playing in his brother’s shadow and eventually makes it all the way to the NHL.

“Writing is a hobby for me, not a job,” notes Hyman. “I write because I enjoy it. I enjoy writing feel-good stories about believing in yourself and never giving up.”

Since his arrival at the University of Michigan after being selected by the Panthers in the 2010 Entry Draft (123rd overall), he’s been improving his game every year for Michigan both on and off the ice.

“From 3pm on it’s basically all hockey,” the Wolverines center explains. “I schedule everything around practice and games.”

Although selected in the Entry Draft by the Panthers, there’s no certainty he’ll ever be offered a deal to skate for the major league club.

“The Panthers own my rights until I leave school,” Hyman explains. “I need to prove myself while I’m here in order to be offered a contract.”

Hyman has impressed fans and coaches alike with his ability to find passing lanes and put the puck on teammates’ sticks with pinpoint precision. That ability has led to his 21 points in two-plus seasons in Ann Arbor.

As the son of a Junior Hockey industrialist in Canada – Hyman’s dad owns over 100 Junior clubs across the Great White North – Hyman developed an ability to deflect adversity due to the constant verbal abuse he received from opposing players and coaches.

“I’d hear all the time I was getting more ice time than others because my dad owns the team,” explains Hyman. “It gave me a harder outer shell to be able to walk away from that.”

The Canadian Junior Hockey League Player of the Year in 2011 (he scored 42 goals for the Hamilton Red Wings) also caught the “occasional anti-Semitic chip on the ice” from the opposition, because hockey players – and athletes in general – can be awful in that regard, trying to gain an edge over their opponent in any manner possible.

“Hockey Hero” has garnered him speaking engagements at schools across Canada, but Hyman says it wasn’t really much to pen the book.

“I wrote it in seventh grade for a short story competition,” said Hyman to the Panthers website. “I won a creative writing award and the teacher said it was really good. From there I kept working on it and eventually turned in into this book. It kind of all happened at once.”

With the work ethic he’s already displayed both with a stick and pen in hand, Hyman should expect to become the first published author to skate for the second-to-last-place Panthers in Sunrise, Florida in the not-so-distant future.

Yossi Goldstein is the Assistant Producer and part-time Morning News Anchor at WBCB-1490 AM and is the host of “Sports Talk With The Sports Rabbi” every Thursday from 8-9pm at www.allnoiseradio.com.