Shooting Stars

"The real excitement in Lewis Portnoy's life began one night 30 years ago, when he witnessed a savage brawl in a now shattered establishment just east of Dogtown (St. Louis)."
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The brawl that changed Lewis Portnoy's life was in a major league hockey game. He had brought a newly bought Nikon to the game, "and I jumped up and started shooting." He became, for 10 great years (1967-1976), the leading photographer of hockey in North America, pioneering new lighting and photography techniques, soon copied by other professionals.

Portnoy's 75 color photographs of National Hockey League players in action represent the birth of modern hockey, after the expansion from the original six-team league. New equipment, colorful goalie masks and uniforms, and a faster, international influence made the spectacle more crowd-pleasing. And! as the league grew, the audience got bigger.

This book is the first to chronicle the opening of that era in hockey, and Lewis Portnoy's photos perfectly complement the descriptive text by Andrew Podnieks. There are essays and player anecdotes about the development of the larger league and the great times that went along with it.

Andrew Podnieks is a hockey historian.