The story of the Moccasin Goalie continues: Danny, Petou, and Anita have been asked to play for the Wolves, and the team has made it to the finals. That alone should prove the three are good enough, but Travis, the team’s best forward, calls them “wimps” and never passes them the puck.

Enter Danny’s glamorous big brother, a star left-winger for the Toronto Maple Leafs, home recovering from an injured shoulder. He sizes up the problem and finds a way to let Travis see the “wimps” as the assets to the team they really are.

William Brownridge’s new book is subtitled The Further Adventures of the Moccasin Goalie, but the sequel stands well on its own. During his Saskatchewan childhood, Brownridge, like Danny, lived for hockey and became a goalie in moccasins because spina bifida and club feet prevented him from wearing skates. That passion, which made The Moccasin Goalie a bestseller, sustains this second engaging book.

Brownridge tells his story simply and directly; the characters are animated by their sport and a strong sense of right and wrong. Danny is a great kid, long on determination and short on self-pity. The resolution is
handled with subtlety: Danny’s big brother could have simply pulled rank on Travis; instead, he gives Travis the key to resolving the situation himself.

Though the story has a contemporary feel that will appeal to kids unaffected by adult nostalgia, observant readers will note in Brownridge’s lively, light-filled paintings the steam locomotives and little bungalows of a world and time – the early 1940s – where any extra family money went into hockey. While The Final Game’s recreation of a hockey-fixated childhood puts it on the same shelf as Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater, it’s a very different book, less literary and self-conscious. Only the love of hockey is the same.