LOOSE PUCKS: After Their Captain Fell, They Rose - A True Story of Tragedy, Brotherhood, and an Impossible Championship Run Paperback – March 17, 2026

December 3, 1975.Michael Schwass crashed to the ice during the game against archrival Glenbrook North. He was 16 years old. By the time the ambulance left the rink, the doctors were not sure he would survive the night.He had shattered his vertebrae. He would never walk again.Three months later, on March 25, 1976, a wheelchair rolled into the Randhurst Twin Ice Arena at the Notre Dame Ice Dons' state championship game playing against the very same team Glenbrook North in which he suffered his injury.Michael Schwass — jersey #21, the heart of this team — had come to watch his brothers win the Illinois State title they had promised to win for him.They kept their promise. Final score: Notre Dame 4, Glenbrook North 3.LOOSE PUCKS is the memoir of that season — told by goalie Matt Berrafato (#31), who has spent 50 years carrying that winter in his chest.It is not a hockey story. Hockey is only the stage.This is a story about what happens when human beings commit to each other completely — when a team becomes a brotherhood, when a brotherhood faces the unthinkable, and when the only answer left is the question Michael Schwass lived by for the rest of his life:"Now what?"Michael spent the next 34 years as a quadriplegic living his life with a body that didn't work and never knowing what was next. Michael's legacy is about teaching those life lessons he did learn that allowed him to live an extraordinary life.He died on September 10, 2010, at the age of 53. He was, without question, the most accomplished person in every room he ever entered.This book is his eulogy. And your mirror.If you have ever loved something completely, lost something that mattered, or stood at a crossroads asking yourself what comes next — this book was written for you. You don't need to have played hockey. You need to have been human.With a foreword by legendary Chicago announcer Wayne Messmer, and co-authored with Mark Meyer, LOOSE PUCKS is the rare memoir that hands you a story and asks what you see in it.LOOSE PUCKS also pioneers something no memoir has done before: more than 200 QR codes placed throughout the book connect you directly to video interviews with teammates, coaches, opposing players, classmates, and families — each one sharing their account of the moment being described on the page. You are not reading about what happened. You are inside the room where it happened.The 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition is available now. Limited to 555 numbered copies.Visit thepurposehunter.com/brotherhood to claim your edition and join the Brotherhood. Read more