Maven's Memories: How The Maven's Lost Book Collection Landed at UBS Arena

Somewhere in a section of UBS arena there stands a 90-volume bookshelf filled with nothing but hockey books.

I know on very good authority that this unique hockey library is patiently awaiting its permanent location for display next hockey season.

If one were to call these hockey volumes dating back to a rare 1940 edition "A Vagabond Library," that would be an accurate depiction and now The Hockey Maven (still me) will tell you why.

Not long after my wife Shirley died a decade ago -- and I eventually retired from my MSG Networks career, I decided to emigrate and join my son Simon's family in Israel.

"Whaddya gonna do with your hockey library?" my then Manhattan roommate Danny asked.

"I'm gonna take it with me, brother," I shot back. "I may be retired from TV, but I'm planning on writing hockey as much as ever. These books have to come with me."

Eventually, the movers arrived and away went my 21-speed GT Avalanche mountain bike, and just about everything else I'd need as well as four bookshelves worth of hockey publications. Or, so I thought.

I soon jetted to Israel and moved in with my family at Kibbutz El-Rom, a little village on the North Golan Heights. A couple of weeks later the movers arrived with all of my stuff. Or so I had hoped.

As I unpacked, I sensed that there were two key items missing, my coveted bike and one of the hockey bookshelves. It turned out that the movers somehow left my bike on a dock in Hoboken -- later returned to me -- but one of the four bookshelves still was missing; the movers simply had forgotten about it.

That particular hockey library happened to be loaded with almost a hundred volumes from encyclopedias to the 85-year-old classic, "Hockey -- The World's Fastest Sport" by New York Americans Hall of Famer Red Dutton. (It was -- and still is -- a collector's item.)

Sure enough, Danny Rios Farrell, my former roommate -- and a huge hockey fan in his own right -- found the library standing alone in the hallway. "They must have forgotten to take it," Danny told me by phone. "What should I do?"

I told him to just take good care of them and I'd get back to him; but I never did. No problem. I had virtually every book I had needed in my new Israeli digs and conveniently forgot the missing Manhattan bookshelves. Fortunately, Danny took good care of them until he took in a new roommate who was not a hockey fan.

Also, not a fan of the hockey library. For some reason, he demanded that the books be removed or he'd toss the collection in a dumpster some midnight. (Remember, I knew that none of this was happening.)

Good hockey fan that he is -- and was -- Danny was determined to save the books and found a mutual friend, John Fayolle, who would join the "Save The Books" campaign. He offered to relieve Danny of the library.

"I realized how valuable the collection was and I didn't want them turned into garbage," Fayolle later revealed. "Danny brought them to my Manhattan apartment and that's where I stored them for safekeeping." (Remember, I still

had no idea that this literary melodrama was unfolding.)

Then, one day out of nowhere, I got a call from Fayolle. "I have a friend of the family coming to live with us," he told me, "and I have a ton of your hockey books here and I have to get rid of them right away. What should I do?"

"WHAT?" I gasped. "YOU HAVE HOCKEY BOOKS OF MINE?"

He sure did but now he had to unload them -- pronto!

Trying very hard to remain calm, I put my thinking cap on and immediately thought of my Long Island buddy, author Joe Rossi. Joe had written a wonderful book about Long Island Ducks star Buzzy Deschamps with an intro by Isles icon Bryan Trottier. I figured that my library might be a neat gift to him.

So, I contacted Joe with my plan and Rossi wrote back. "I've got a better idea; why don't you donate them to UBS Arena and the Islanders?"

I felt like whacking myself a few times in my head while musing: "How come I didn't think of that?"

That done, I told Pal Joey that I loved his idea but who was to say the Islanders would as well. Then, there was Sir Fayolle needing the books gone before his new tenant was about to arrive.

The Maven needed yet another hero so I contacted my super-duper -- and I do mean SUPER DUPER --Long Island intern Solon Mihas. "I've got a ton of my books -- a veritable hockey library -- and I need a place to store them for a while. Can you help me?'

Naturally, Super Duper Solon came through. He drove to Manhattan, loaded up every single volume and took them to his family home and then catalogued the whole shebang.

Next on the agenda was my longtime pal and Islanders employee, Cliff Gault. I wanted to get some feedback as to whether the Isles would want the books in the first place. Cliff checked around as did David Kolb who co-authored -- with

Zach Weinstock and The Maven -- the Islanders 50th anniversary book.

Kolb -- along with Isles co-owner Jon Ledecky -- had been the idea man behind the Stan Fischler Press Exhibit. David volunteered to shepherd the books from Chez Mihas to UBS; which he did. And that's where they comfortably sit right now.

Between Ledecky, Kolb and whomever else chooses to be involved, the plan is for the books to be exhibited at the start of next season in a manner that the powers that be see fit. (There are plenty of possibilities; all good.)

As you know by now, there were a lot of heroes in this saga. To wit:

1. DANNY RIOS FARRELL who prevented the new guy in his apartment from tossing the entire hockey library into the garbage.

2. JOHN FAYOLLE who agreed to store the books in his apartment and ultimately contacted The Maven to tell me that the collection still was live -- and well.

3. JOE ROSSI, the esteemed Long Island author whose idea it was to bequeath the books to the Islanders and not his living room.

4. CLIFF GAULT, my buddy at the Isles office who passed around the idea of the Islanders being the only NHL to have a hockey library in its arena.

5. DAVID KOLB, who helped create the Fischler Press Exhibit at UBS and orchestrated the library's exodus from Woodbury to UBS Arena in Elmont.

6. ZACH WEINSTOCK: When I thought this literary safari never would reach its terminal, the guy who co-authored our Rangers-Islanders book, kept my spirits up when they were down and inspired me to get the job done.

And finally, I have it on good authority that if I should ask this around-the-circuit book collection for a comment, guess what it would say?

Home, Sweet Home!