Sask. man has one of the largest known collections of hockey books. It all started with a hockey draft

James Benesh was so interested in researching an online hockey draft, he ended up with one of the largest-known collections of hockey books and eventually being called a hockey historian.

The Regina man, who runs a business that sells and installs custom window coverings, has about 1,200 hockey books.

The Society for International Hockey Research, of which Benesh is a member, is aware of only two other private collections that are larger.

Until about 2008, he says his collection was modest — about 30 or 40 books, mainly gifts from his family.

That changed when he started talking about hockey online on a professional hockey message boards website and found others who liked discussing the game's history.

Benesh found something called the "All Time Draft," which he describes as "a competitive research project/hockey fantasy/history game."

Participants draft teams of the greatest players of all time, trying to outdo competitors by finding better players — and then try to prove that they're better by using passages from books and newspapers. The fantasy teams compete in a playoff format that's voted on.

"I became very obsessed with winning that draft and wanting to get as much information together about my players as I could to prove that I had built the best team," he said.

Benesh built a library of 300 to 400 hockey books. Hundreds more were added through an estate sale of a late collector and historian, Carleton "Mac" McDiarmid, who served as a goal judge at the Montreal Forum.

Then around 2016, Benesh also acquired every issue of The Hockey News after buying the issues he lacked from another Regina man who responded to Benesh's online ad. That collector — the late Winston Bohn, then in his 80s — had issues dating back to 1947.

"I thought one day I'd eventually have a full collection," Benesh said. "But I didn't think that it was going to come from somebody local, somebody so close I could just walk to their place."

Benesh's wife told The Hockey News about his complete collection, prompting the publication to profile him.

Around that time, many publications and websites were publishing top players lists to mark the 100th season of the NHL. Benesh said he felt a lot of them were "very bad" and e-mailed The Hockey News with an offer to put something like that together for them.

After seeing the way he wrote and reasoned, Benesh was invited to be a consultant on a project that ranked each NHL franchise's top 50 players of all time. He critiqued a panel's ranking, which led to some adjustments to some lists.