Early this morning, sad news hit the hockey world. Legendary New York Post hockey columnist Larry Brooks passed away at 75. He lost a brief battle with cancer. Brooks’ colleague Mike Vaccaro broke the news with a very touching tribute to what Brooks embodied in all of his years covering the sport he loved.
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“He was the best hockey writer of the past 50 years,” said Mark Everson, for many years his fellow hockey writer at the newspaper, forever his friend. “He said he was lucky to get to The Post, but The Post was even luckier to have him.”
“For the last three decades, no one covered a sports beat in this city better than Larry did on the Rangers,” Post Executive Sports Editor Chris Shaw said. “Well before the Hockey Hall of Fame enshrined him, Larry had already earned a place among the legends who have graced the pages of The Best Sports in Town.”
“I like to think that I was a guy who could change the momentum of a game when I came on the ice,” said Sean Avery, the immensely popular left wing who played parts of six seasons for the Rangers. “Brooksie could do that with the swipe of his pen. The guys that really understood playing for the Rangers all had a good relationship with Brooksie because he loves hockey players.”
There have been plenty of tributes that have poured in since Brooks’ passing. Inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018 after winning the Elmer Ferguson Award for his contributions to the sport, Larry was like one of us. He was a diehard Rangers fan who sat up in the Blue Seats at the Garden in Section 419. I know that fact due to my Dad, who used to see him at games. They were a year apart.
“I feel like I represent the Blue Seaters,” he once said in an interview about how he covered the sport on that special day on Nov. 13, 2018. “I try to represent them every day when I write, and I hope I represented them well today. … I’ve tried to be as straightforward as possible. Every day I go into work, I’ve done my best to be honest, be informative, accurate, and entertaining.”
His no-nonsense style always hit home with fans. Whether you agreed with him or not, he was going to tell it like it is. That’s what made him a quintessential New Yorker. Brooks was the The Post. Whether it was on the beat covering the Devils, Islanders, and Rangers, or in his memorable Slap Shots column that appeared on Sundays, he always provided readers with lots of information and interesting tidbits.
To be honest, I looked forward to reading Slap Shots every Sunday because I knew that it would be hard hitting and entertaining. In some way, my old Hard Hits column was a nod to Brooks. I admired the passion and style he brought to covering the sport.
Little did I know he was also a great baseball writer. He covered the Bronx Zoo Yankees in the 1970s and returned to contributing columns on both the Yankees and Mets during the summertime. He worked alongside Mollie Walker as they took on the US Open. If you haven’t read Walker’s emotional tribute to the man, please do yourself a favor and read what she wrote. It was from the heart about someone who made her a more knowledgeable hockey beat writer by having her read the whole NHL labor agreement.
“No one was as creative in their coverage as he is. Larry had a way with words that always resonated. From giving Henrik Lundqvist his forever nickname “The King” to eviscerating a bad performance, Larry’s words always stuck.
One NHL GM once threatened an agent that he would call off a trade if he read about it in the New York Post the next day.
We cracked up over that one. We laughed all the time. Larry and I talked about anything and everything, but we could go for hours when it came to hockey. Even when we spent every minute of the 10-day 4 Nations Faceoff trip together last season, we were texting the next day like there was so much for us to catch up on.”-Mollie Walker, NY Post, Nov. 13, 2025.
Harping back to what Mollie said about how Larry had a way with words that always resonated. That’s true. He always found a way to get you to chuckle. He was a character who gave us something. He put it all out there. Maybe that’s what I liked most about him.
It’s hard to believe he’s really gone. When it was revealed before the season that he was taking a leave of absence, I had a feeling it was due to a personal matter. How I wish I had been wrong. I was hopeful that we’d get more great columns from Larry. He’d probably have enjoyed where the game is right now. I’m glad the Rangers got him one final home win.
There will be a real void without Brooks for the hockey community. He was old school. There was nothing fake about Larry. He also was a good person. There were a few instances where I sent him messages either on social media or email. I always got a response back. That says a lot about who he was.
Brooks was more than just an award winning Hall of Fame writer. He also worked for the Devils as Vice President of Communications, spending a decade (1982-92) in East Rutherford before returning to the NY Post beat. He built a great relationship with former Devils architect Lou Lamoriello.
“What never changed, from day one, was the personal part of our relationship,” said Lamoriello, who ran the Devils from 1987-2015 and the Islanders from 2018 through last April and who sat at the Brooks family table in Toronto the night Brooks was honored by the Hall of Fame. “One thing you always knew about Larry was that he’d tell it like it is.”-Mike Vaccaro, NY Post, Nov. 13, 2025.
Brooks had some run-ins with former Rangers coach John Tortorella. It dated back to an interview Tortorella did after the Lightning lost to the Devils in Game 5 of the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The most popular was when Tortorella took him to task for a sarcastic column he wrote about Rangers defenseman Wade Redden. The exchange remains priceless.
Despite having a heated relationship, Tortorella and Brooks reconciled years ago. Tortorella had recently checked in to see how Brooks was doing. Something that meant a lot to him. It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get the chance to see them on some show sharing a laugh about the good old days. Brooksie became Larry’s nickname thanks to Tortorella. He even referenced it in his name on Twitter, which was NYP_Brooksie.
Larry Brooks leaves behind son Jordan, daughter-in-law Joanna, and two grandchildren, Scott and Reese. He will be sorely missed.
RIP LARRY BROOKS (Feb. 26, 1950 – Nov. 13, 2025)
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