Home Ice Advantage

In this MYRCA Honour Book, an abused boy finds safety, friendship and a missing legend inside a historic hockey arena.

I looked at the newspaper and gasped. There, staring back at me, was my own picture. It was this year’s school photo. Now it took up most of the front page of the Toronto Star, smack dab under the large headline: STILL NO SIGN OF MISSING BOY.

Jake’s drive to become a hockey star is matched only by his father’s obsessive determination to see his son succeed. No matter how hard Jake works, how many pucks he puts in the net, it’s never enough for his dad. Battered, bruised and tired of being afraid, Jake leaves his quiet suburban home in the middle of the night and runs away to downtown Toronto, where he finds comfort and safety in the most unexpected of places—the company of a homeless man with a storied past living inside the shuttered Maple Leaf Gardens.

TOM EARLE was born in Orillia, Ontario, and was an avid young hockey player who played with the Orillia Travelways, the Barrie Colts and Dartmouth College of the NCAA before travelling to England to play for the Whitley Bay Warriors of the British Ice Hockey League. He has been a teacher for the past twenty-five years and is the author of the young adult novel The Hat Trick. Earle lives in Oro-Medonte, Ontario, with his wife and three children.