THE KING is the memoir of the late trail-blazing Swedish hockey player, Börje Salming.  The book follows his early days as a young man in a northern mining town to his days under the bright lights of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs before retiring and moving back to Sweden to finish out his career

With Salming leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs in the summer of 1989, and my intensely delusional Leafs fandom beginning in 1993, I completely missed Börje’s time in Toronto.  However, I always knew he was an incredible athlete and arguably the greatest defenceman the franchise ever had.  While he doesn’t have the cups nor the mega-corporation coffee and donut chain that Tim Horton had, but Tim also didn’t have to deal with the Harold Ballard of the 70s and 80s (rather than the one of the 60s) who mismanaged the team so badly it was nearly impossible to win.

This follows much of the same style as many of the hockey-player memoirs out there, so I would find it hard to recommend it to someone who isn’t either a big Toronto Maple Leafs fan or someone who was around during Salming’s heyday and would like to know more about the struggles European players faced when coming over to the NHL.  Börje had to play twice as hard and endure twice as much violence as your average hockey player given the established stars wanted to scare off any would-be hopefuls from coming across the pond to take up roster spots.

Although Salming passed away four years ago, the book was largely complete prior to his untimely death.  That said, co-author Ola Liljedahl interjects from time to time throughout the book to expand upon some of Börje’s writing by either adding context or additional story details.  Ola also helped finish the book alongside Salming’s family detailing Borje’s short-lived battle with ALS (I still can’t go back and watch Salming’s final appearance in Toronto without tearing up).

THE KING is a quick read that is at times both inspirational yet devastatingly brutal, especially when Salming gets into the weeds describing his plethora of injuries.  Athlete memoirs can sometimes be a slog to get through as they can often fall into the trap of regurgitating game recaps, but thankfully Börje writes with more of a conversational tone thus crafting a breezy page-turner of a memoir.