Blood Feud: Detroit Red Wings v. Colorado Avalanche: The Inside Story of Pro Sports' Nastiest and Best Rivalry of Its Era

• The Code: The Unwritten Rules Of Fighting And Retaliation In The Nhl
• The Captain: Steve Yzerman: 22 Seasons, 3 Cups, 1 Team
• What It Means to Be a Red Wing: Detroit's Greatest Players Talk About Detroit Hockey (What It Means to Be ...)
• Detroit Red Wings - A Celebration of Champions (NHL Original Six Series)
• Detroit Red Wings - NHL Stanley Cup Champions 2007-2008
• Between the Lines: Not-So-Tall Tales From Ray "Scampy" Scapinello's Four Decades in the NHL
• Jonesy: Put Your Head Down and Skate: The Improbable Career of Keith Jones
• Red Wings Essential: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Real Fan! (Essential)
• NHL: Stanley Cup 2007-2008 Champions - Detroit Red Wings
• The Game

between the Detroit Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche is chuck a block full of previously unknown, but hilarious, peculiar (Scotty Bowman is a unique dude to say the least), and riveting inside information and anecdotes. Dater, a hockey writer for the Denver Post, is no homer, and plays it fair, being equally snarky and funny about both teams. Its a terrific read and manditory bookshelf inclusion for all true hockey fans. Adrian Dater's account of the feud (and it was bloody). Dater covered every game of the 90's between these two rivals, and its all facinatingly covered in this book.

Seeing that it was written by an Avs beat writer I assumed it would be one sided painting the Red Wings as the "Evil Empire" or what have you. Not only did it cover the major games and playoff series of the rivalry it also gave short Bios of the key people involved ie Bowman, MacCarty, Draper, Roy, and of course Lemeiux. I was suprised by how unbiased this book was. That was not the Case.

All in all, though, this is a fun read and is strongly recommended for all Wings and Avs fans. Happily, this was not the case, as both sides were evenly covered. The strength of the book is its coverage of the history of several of the major players on each side as well as a revealing look behind the scenes. My only complaint is that more of the on-ice action could have been added in, and I think that this would have fleshed out the entire book more completely. I'm a big Red Wings fan, and while this book looked interesting at first glance, I worried that it would be slanted in the Avs favor/perspective given that the author has followed and written about the Avs since they moved to Denver. I watched most of these hockey games, but I didn't know much of what was going on in the front offices and lockerooms.

In addition, the photo section is clearly tilted to the Avalanche side of things, in both quantity of photos and in the captions for them. The sections on Roy/Lemieux/Bowman are all well-written and contain good information but they interrupt the flow of the book and end up feeling like filler. Dater slams the Detroit print & radio media for being "homers" and for being biased, but then prints quote-after-quote of homerism from Woody Paige, much of which is just patently offensive. By contrast, hardly anything is presented from Mitch Albom - widely acknowledged as the best sportswriter in the country. I'm in agreement with the other reviewer who wondered how anyone could find this book to be unbiased. This could have, and should have, been 100+ pages longer with a closer eye cast toward making it unbiased.

Still, this is a must-read for any fan of hockey. In the end, every series is recapped in a few short pages and very little detail is given to regular season games other than the famous "Revenge Game" of 3/26/97 and the follow-up ones with Lemieux's return match McCarty and the Osgood/Roy fight. While the subject matter is great, the presentation, bias, and overall content level drag this down to just mediocre. Adrian Dater takes on the Red Wings/Avalanche rivalry of 1996-2002 in this highly-readable book. This book weighs in at a light 237 pages and frankly just does not include enough hockey in it.