A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

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Mario Lemieux: The Final Period (Reich Publishing, Pittsburgh, $50); For the Love of Hockey (Firefly Books, Ltd., Westport, Conn., $45).

Just as hockey doesn’t translate well to television, it rarely is well illuminated in books. The speed, contact and skills that make the game unique and the history that has shaped it rarely get their due. Only Ken Dryden’s “The Game” has caught the essence of hockey and expressed it in lyrically memorable terms. Hockey has had its share of self-serving autobiographies and breathless chronicles of championship seasons, but it lacks a poet laureate, as Roger Kahn has been for baseball.

Neither of these two new books will fill that void, but they are decent additions to any hockey fan’s library.

The glossy and oversized Lemieux book is more noteworthy for its marvelous photographs than its text. Lemieux retired after last season, at 31, exhausted by the effects of back surgery, Hodgkin’s disease and the NHL’s tacit approval of obstruction fouls that allowed lesser-skilled players to compete. In the text, which seems geared for young readers and on many pages is in large type, he recounts his ordeal with back surgery and chemotherapy in surprisingly dry and unemotional terms. He was admired, more than loved, as a player because he seemed to hold something back from the media, and this book won’t alter that perception much.

“For the Love of Hockey” is a compilation of first-person stories from 91 former and current NHL players. No revelations, just many amusing stories about how they became enamored of the game. It’s easy to picture the young Patrick Roy using pillows as leg pads to imitate the saves he saw his heroes make while he watched “Hockey Night in Canada,” or to envision the Sutter brothers scrapping with each other on the pond on their family farm.

One of the nicest touches is that not every player is contemporary or a superstar: Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Jean Beliveau, Gump Worsley and Wayne Gretzky are included but so are Leo Boivin, Andy Bathgate, Bernie Federko, Rick Middleton and up-and-comers such as Keith Tkachuk and Alexei Yashin.

In the meantime, hockey awaits the author who will do it justice.