Never BoringNever Boring

Cheering for the National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks through more than half a century of extraordinary bungles, bad luck and near misses has to count as one of the toughest jobs in professional sports. As each new generation of fans learns, it's a history of futility and disappointment that goes all the way back to the start, when a league-sponsored spin of a roulette wheel at the 1970 draft -- the first ever for the club -- awarded future superstar Gilbert Perreault to the Buffalo Sabres and left the Canucks with ... you know, Dale Tallon. Since then, the story has been littered with front-office fiascos, blown seasons, city-searing riots, instantly regrettable trades and gaffed draft picks (Jocelyn Guevremont in 1971's first round -- not that Larry Robinson guy). For decades, veteran Vancouver hockey writer Ed Willes has had his own vantage point on this slow-motion wreck, in the middle of which is a team that has, in his words, "been haunted by dark and unnatural forces since its inception." And Willes' knowledge extends far beyond the most infamous chapters of the story. As this irreverent, often bitterly funny chronicle shows, the litany of woe stretches back farther and runs deeper than many Canucks fans realize, and stars several of the biggest names in hockey history. Exerting the magnetic pull of any great disaster story, Willes's account of a uniquely confounded franchise and its obsessive followers offers proof that the only pleasure in a sports fan's life that can compete with basking in victory is wallowing in collective misery.