I wish Zamboni Rodeo had been around when I was researching my second novel. If it had, I wouldn’t have had to travel on an overheated bus with the San Antonio Iguanas of the Central Hockey League to find out how many times 20 or so grown men can watch Dumb and Dumber. Thankfully, journalist Jason Cohen has done a large favour for hockey novelists, as well as those merely curious about the ins and outs of minor league hockey in the American South, by spending an entire season with the Austin Ice Bats of the Western Professional Hockey League. Hockey Night in Canada was never like this.

Cohen travels with the Ice Bats to such booming hockey hotbeds as Lake Charles, Louisiana, El Paso, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. We meet the boys on the bus (almost all of them Canadian), watch them adjust to life in the Lone Star state, and follow them through a season fraught with losing streaks, broken down buses, and even a fired coach. There are juicy anecdotes in abundance and plenty of laughs along the way.

Ice hockey in the American South is big business. Most Americans like our national game because it perfectly mirrors their barbarous national anima. In Lake Charles, “‘C’mon, fight,’ one [fan] whines, after four and a half minutes of perfectly straightforward hockey. ‘C’mon fuck ’em up!’”

This last bit of sociological speculation is mine. Like any writer, Cohen’s strengths are also his weaknesses. Though rich in detail and anecdote, Zamboni Rodeo lacks analysis, a desire to go beyond, say, the what of violence to the why of its appeal. Nevertheless, Zamboni Rodeo is an enjoyable, well-documented account of a year in the life of the Great Canadian Game in the World’s Greatest Nation.