When Cheers Are Not Enough
by Slavko Ray

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Baker, Conrad, Angus, and Masaccio are high school teachers who occasionally meet to jam as a crude alt-rock garage band. They are also diehard hockey fans desperate to see an end to their beloved Toronto Mighty Pines’ fifty-seven year Cup drought. But another early playoff exit soon has the foursome resolving to support the team in ways beyond just cheering. Enlisting the vocal talents of a new teacher named Perreault, the weekend rockers restyle themselves as a musical coven and decide to call on supernatural forces for help with their hockey woes. By transforming popular song lyrics into hockey spells, they create a magical playlist of tunes and dip their toes into witchcraft. A bit of help from a seasoned Wiccan and her talented apprentice impacts the five fans’ world in subtle ways, tuning them into the love, loss, and mystery saturating their ordinary lives. Will any of it serve to bring the Clarence Cup, hockey’s Holy Grail, back to the city of Toronto? That depends, of course, on how the Mighty Pines fare during an erratic and unpredictable 2019-2020 season—a season like few others, and one that will leave more than just the Pines’ fortunes in question.

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Slavko Ray enjoyed twenty-eight years teaching and coaching at high schools in Oakville and Georgetown, Ontario. Now retired, he lives in Erin with his family and does his share of cheering when he tunes into Leafs, Jays, and Raptors games on a trusty old AM/FM pocket radio. When Cheers Are Not Enough is his first novel.

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Contributors

Author

Slavko Ray