Jonesy: Put Your Head Down and Skate: The Improbable Career of Keith Jones
The book, Jonesy: Put Your Head Down And Skate, is a hockey memoir by former Capital, Avalanche and Flyers player Keith Jones, now a radio personality in Philadelphia and an analyst with Versus. I've always liked Jones, on the ice as a gritty player and on the tube as a clean-cut, well-spoken broadcaster. I look forward to games with his intermission commentary because he knows what he's talking about and looks comfortable on the air. As for the book, it traces his extremely improbable rise through the lower Junior ranks (he never played Major Junior) into college at Western Michigan and then on to the Baltimore Skipjacks, a now-defunct AHL affiliate of the Washington Capitals. The Capitals drafted Keith in 1988. As everyone knows, Jones made the Capitals squad and began a fairly lengthy NHL career from that point. In the fall of 1996, Jones was traded to the Avalanche. This, of course, was my favorite part of the book, and he provides a number of interesting little insights into his former teammates. The book is full of excellent anecdotes from Jones' improbable career, and the book really gets going once he reaches the Flyers, a few years and a serious knee injury after being traded to the Avalanche. His battle with a botched ACL surgery makes an engaging story, and you really start to empathize with him. Well, at least I do, since I had knee surgery in April and my leg is still not back to normal. I'm no professional ice hockey player, but I feel his pain. --milehighhockey blog