Mitch Albom’s New Musical An Ode to Hockeytown

Albom melds music and sports in new play, “Hockey — The Musical!”

Jay Tafilowski

Before Mitch Albom was a novelist and fiction writer he was a longtime sports writer and also an accomplished musician. Now Albom has combined some of those passions in a new musical, “Hockey — The Musical!”. The show opens May 19th at The City Theater.

Albom describes the play this way to the Detroit Free Press:

“The concept is that God decides that man has invented too many sports and he wants to send a message,” he said. “So instead of sending a flood, he just decides to wipe out one sport and he sends an angel down to pick out the sport. And the angel just arbitrarily picks hockey.

“And this hockey fan jumps out of the audience — who’s one of the cast members — and says, ‘Oh, God, no. Anything but hockey. Please, not hockey.’ He begs God if he can find 100 pure hockey souls will he save the sport? And God says, ‘Find five. You’ll never find 100.’ ”

Albom joins Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson to talk about the new play, and covering sports in Detroit since the 1980s. 

Click the audio player above to hear more.

Author