Read @ Joe’s

Title: Hammered: The Fight Of My Life (2025) Author: Dave Schultz Publisher: Viking Book jacket: The original Broad Street Bully has secrets to reveal. Joe says: Hammered is a deeply human story about pride, pain, and the long, slow process of getting back up after life knocks you cold. Triumphant, raw, and unforgettable.

Dave Schultz didn’t just leave his mark on the NHL, he carved his legacy into the boards. The man they called The Hammer—centerpiece of the Broad Street Bullies, and living embodiment of old-school Flyers hockey—has long been remembered for his fists. Yet in his autobiography Hammered, Schultz proves he has just as much command with words. “Hammered.” By family. By alcohol. By a sport that seemingly turned its back on one of its champs. Hammered by life. This is not a simple collection of ice-level brawls and behind-the-bench tales. Hammered is a deeply human story about pride, pain, and the long, slow process of getting back up after life knocks you cold.

The book traces Schultz from a Saskatchewan upbringing in abject poverty to the height of hockey fame in Philadelphia, where he helped bring home back-to-back Stanley Cups in ’74 and ’75 under coach Fred Shero’s “Take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor” gospel. Schultz revisits the legendary scraps—against Potvin, against O’Reilly, against Howatt, against anyone who got too close to Bernie Parent—but he also homes in on the quieter fights no crowd ever saw: the corrosive shame of alcoholism, the guilt of missing family, the grief of losing a granddaughter. In Schultz’s telling, those battles lasted longer and hit harder than anything that ever happened in the Spectrum.

What makes Hammered stand apart from other athlete memoirs—especially those penned by enforcers—is that it never devolves into self-mythologizing. Schultz doesn’t glorify the role of the goon, nor does he condemn it. He treats it the way hockey players treat a broken nose: it happened, it mattered, it shaped things, and here’s what it cost. The writing moves with the same rhythm Schultz once fought with: jab, jab, truth. Co-written by Dan Robson, Hammered reads like one long fight. Schultz (and Robson) expertly flows between a fight at the boards, a fight at the bar, and a fight with family. Memories and prose beautifully bob, weave, and skate between all aspects of his life.

Even through the heavy moments, Schultz’s personality shines—funny, blunt, sharp as skate steel. Philly fans will feel the warmth here. This city doesn’t forget its warriors, and Schultz writes with the affection of someone who knows he became more than a player—he became ours. And the love goes both ways, Hammer.

From indecision and alcoholism to rehab and redemption, Schultz tells his tale like how he played on the ice: all business. He details a number of his games, fights, and, of course, all the Stanley Cup glory. Even though bookended with youth and retirement, Hammered is 100% about hockey. And it even concludes with a Hammer-endorsed fantasy team of all-time enforcers that any hockey fan will dream about.

This is a book about hockey, recovery, legacy, and the dangerous weight of nostalgia. Hammered is a bruiser with a beating heart. A story that earns its scars. And one hell of a final victory from a man who always fought for the right reasons—even when he didn’t always know what they were.

Triumphant, raw, and unforgettable… just like the Hammer himself.

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Thanks to NetGalley and Viking for the advance copy of this game-winning read.