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Five movies to get you ready for puck drop

Courtesy Photo
Bill Hart

Connector Contributor

Gary Newman plays struggling player-coach, Reggie Dunlop, in the 1977 cult classic, “Slap Shot.” The film follows the Charlestown Chiefs, a low-level minor league hockey franchise from an imaginary city in the rust belt. When it is announced that the mill that employs 10,000 people in the city is shutting down in the spring, the poorly-performing team seems all but doomed. In a last-ditch effort to try and get another city to buy franchise, Dunlop chooses to ditch the traditional hockey tactics of Eddie Shore and Maurice Richard in favor of the hard-hitting and extremely violent play that lower-level hockey teams of the ‘70s were notorious for. The team’s play turns barbaric after the arrival of the empty-headed Hanson brothers, whose iconic Coke bottle glasses and idiotic demeanor are revered in hockey pop-culture. Only leading scorer, Ned Braden, refuses to become a goon as attendance soars and the Chiefs start winning games by beating their opponents to a pulp. Braden later makes up for his lack of physical aggression by creating one of the greatest endings in sports movie history.

The story of the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Hockey Team is portrayed in the 2004 instant-classic, “Miracle.” During a time when Olympians had to retain amateur status in order to compete, University of Minnesota head coach, Herb Brooks, was tasked with creating a team of college hockey players that could hold their own against virtual professionals from the Communist bloc so the United States would not get embarrassed on their own ice in Lake Placid, New York. The team was comprised mostly of kids from Boston and Minnesota and was captained by Winthrop native, Mike Eruzione. The film captures “The Miracle on Ice,” which many people see as the greatest moment in the history of sports. The film does a fantastic job of capturing the tension around a U.S. and Soviet matchup at a particularly turbulent time during The Cold War. Brooks’ “Legs Feed the Wolf” speech is arguably the best in film history and is made all the more important by the fact that Brooks passed away shortly after production ended.

“The Mighty Ducks” brings viewers back to a time when Disney was not afraid to throw in a little adult content and language. The year is 1992 and big shot lawyer, Gordon Bombay, gets pulled over for a DUI after being scolded by his boss, Mr. Ducksworth. The former youth hockey star is forced to do mandatory community service in the form of coaching the worst and most ill-equipped hockey team in the state of Minnesota. After some self-discovery, teambuilding and a little corporate sponsorship, the Ducks are born. Though kid-friendly during the kissing scenes, “The Mighty Ducks” is a really solid hockey movie and underdog story.

As Disney was preparing to enter its first season of ownership of their NHL expansion team, The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, they released a sequel called “D2: The Mighty Ducks.” During the beginning of the movie, Disney had to fix some major plot holes to make its second idea for a premise believable, but in a matter of minutes, Bombay blew out his knee playing minor league hockey and was ready to coach again. With the help of a hefty corporate deal, he was made head coach of the U.S. National Team for the Junior Goodwill Games and was rounding up old Ducks left and right. A few new players from all over the country are introduced to the squad, but they end up meshing with the Ducks pretty well. The jokes hit and the plot is about as predictable as its predecessor’s, but it is really Kenan Thompson and his storied knuckle puck that make this movie worth watching.

“Though The Rocket” should probably be the fifth film on this list; it has a clinical lack of a trained chimpanzee that can play ice hockey so the last spot has to be given up to the 2000 classic, “MVP: Most Valuable Primate.” The people responsible for bringing the world “Air Bud” take credit for a plot that lacks actual meaning, but is packed with tons of fun and goofy antics. Though rated very poorly by critics, there is a lot to like about Jack, a specially trained monkey that can understand sign language and therefore communicate with the deaf sister of a junior hockey player that found him hiding out in a treehouse, after he was mistakenly shipped to Alaska. This movie’s flawless plot and abundance of cartoonish sound-effects make it a must-watch for people that just love to throw on the pads and slip over banana peels in the neutral zone.

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