Joe Starkey is an award-winning reporter and columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He has covered the Penguins since 1997 for the Tribune-Review and The Hockey News, following stories ranging from Mario Lemieux’s greatest comeback to the team’s second plunge into bankruptcy. In 2003 Starkey won a Golden Quill Award, presented by the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, for his story on chewing tobacco abuse in baseball. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, attended graduate school at Duquesne University, and resides in Pittsburgh.

Readers have the chance to meet the Pittsburgh Penguins, one of the wildest, wackiest, most wonderful sports franchises that ever waddled its way across North America. If Penguins fans are not shedding tears of sadness, they are crying for joy or simply laughing so hard they cannot stop. The team’s games once played on a station called WEEP, and its first mascot, a penguin named Pete, died of pneumonia. In Tales from the Pittsburgh Penguins, sportswriter Joe Starkey takes fans inside the locker rooms, onto the team buses (including the one defenseman Bryan “Buggsy” Watson hi-jacked) and behind the personalities that have shaped Penguins hockey since 1967. No franchise has survived more near-death experience than this one, which twice went bankrupt and man times escaped the threat of relocation. In 1975 things were so tough that players had their postgame oranges taken away.

Tales from the Pittsburgh Penguins

Breakaway: The Inside Story of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Rebirth

Breakaway mixes the perfect blend of dogged reporting with colorful story-telling. The detail Andrew Conte provides while lifting the curtain on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh is remark-able. This is not just a hockey book, this is story of politics and of business that shares the blueprint in how to successfully run an organization. Even the most die-hard Penguins fan will learn something new about the power brokers who saved their franchise. –Craig Custance, National Hockey Writer, ESPN the Magazine

A detailed, fascinating account of Penguins rise from bankruptcy to Stanley Cup champion that takes you inside the board rooms as well as the players dressing rooms. –David Shoalts, hockey columnist, The Globe and Mail

When I grew up playing hockey in Pittsburgh, those of us who played and went to Penguin games were cult-like. Andrew Conte in Breakaway, explains how and why we are so lucky to be one of the best hockey cities in the world. How did it happen? Andrew gives you every single detail and reminds everyone how Mario Lemieux is and was the Penguins savior. –Paul Alexander, Host, Sports Radio 93.7 The Fan, Pittsburgh

A detailed, fascinating account of Penguins rise from bankruptcy to Stanley Cup champion that takes you inside the board rooms as well as the players dressing rooms. –David Shoalts, hockey columnist, The Globe and Mail

When I grew up playing hockey in Pittsburgh, those of us who played and went to Penguin games were cult-like. Andrew Conte in Breakaway, explains how and why we are so lucky to be one of the best hockey cities in the world. How did it happen? Andrew gives you every single detail and reminds everyone how Mario Lemieux is and was the Penguins savior. –Paul Alexander, Host, Sports Radio 93.7 The Fan, Pittsburgh

Breakaway transcends Americans passions for sports and casino gambling as it follows two professional hockey team owners who run the table from bankruptcy to a lucrative new arena and the most-storied trophy in all of sports.

Already the Pittsburgh Penguins were unconventional. One former owner, a Hollywood producer, used the team as backdrop for a blockbuster movie with terrorists attacking during a championship game. Then after the Penguins won two real championships, its star forward Mario Lemieux took ownership of the team when it could not afford to pay the $32.5 million he was owed. Rather than skating off to a richer market, he stayed in Pittsburgh, a city going through its own transformation from gritty steel to clean, high-tech industries. To make payroll, Lemieux partnered with California billionaire Ron Burkle, a Page Six celebrity and pal of President Bill Clinton.

None of that changed the fact that no one wins without cash. To make that money, a team needs a modern arena with luxury boxes, club seats and concession stands serving quality cuts of beef and micro-brewed beers. Defying conventional wisdom about sports and gambling, Lemieux rolled the dice on slot machines. When that idea became an uncertain prospect, Lemieux threatened to unload the team, nearly selling it to the Canadian business mogul who makes BlackBerry wireless devices. Finally, Lemieux forced politicians into doing what he wanted all along: They came up with money for an arena that would keep the team in Pittsburgh. In a meeting so secret that it took place in the back room of a New Jersey roadside hotel, Pennsylvania s Gov. Ed Rendell worked out a deal for using the state s slots proceeds to pay for the building. The moment brought together two old friends from Democratic circles: the governor and Burkle, a major party benefactor.

Then Lemieux and Burkle hit a hockey lottery jackpot, winning rights to draft the hottest phenomenon in a generation, Sidney Crosby, 17, who, like basketball s LeBron James, had been marked for greatness since grade school. The owners already had picked up another hot prospect: Evgeni Malkin, a Russian who played for the Steelers of the Ural Mountains, snuck away from his old team s owners in a late-night escape with the drama of a Cold War spy novel.

Breakaway brings the hockey fan into the action of the behind the scenes intrigue and high stakes action in the front office of a major league sports franchise.

Breakaway: The Inside Story of the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Rebirth