If there is another movie about minor league hockey other than Slap Shot (1977), other than its sequels, then I am unaware of it.  Based on the original, I am not sure we should consider the subsequent titles.  Either way, it is one of the unique reasons why I chose to review it.  A few others include the fact that it is one of the few remaining films with some brand recognition that I have yet to review.  That, and I have not looked at many pieces of cinema from the 1970s.  For better or worse, the streaming services that I usually peruse do not have many offerings from that decade.  Anyway, this is my attempt to correct all those oversights, though it turned out to be somewhat of an assault on my Catholic senses, as you shall see.

The first thing you see in Slap Shot is Charlestown Chiefs’, a fictional city and team, goalie Denis Lemieux (Yvon Barrette) giving an interview to their beleaguered radio announcer, Jim Carr (Andrew Duncan), on the finer points of the sport.  Not long thereafter, Denis is on the ice for the Chiefs latest in a long line of defeats.  Following the game, the players are forced by their general manager, Joe McGrath (Strother Martin), to take part in a fashion show he puts on as a way to boost flagging attendance.  Those forced to endure the spectacle complain to their player manager, the legendary Reggie Dunlop (Paul Newman).  Reggie meets with Joe to try and figure out other ways of going about their business, but the latter reveals something even more devastating: the franchise is about to fold.  There are contributing factors.  The Pennsylvania mill town is about to see their factory close, meaning the soon-to-be out-of-work populace will be less interested in spending their money on hockey.  The Chiefs’ performance is another reason.  The news takes Reggie by surprise, and he initially seeks solace in his estranged wife, Francine Dunlop (Jennifer Warren).  The two are amiable with one another, but his dedication to hockey and infidelity means that she no longer lives with him.  With the possibility of his career being over, he tries to tell her that he will reform, but she does not believe him.  It is not a rejection, but he is puzzled as to what he should do until he meets the Hanson brothers.  As an aside, they are played by Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson, and David Hanson.  They are basically one, violent hockey playing character, so who they are as individuals is not important.  Reggie first sees them beating up a Coke machine to get it to return a lost quarter.  These antics make him view them as little more than children on skates, vowing not to play them.  This is particularly to the liking of Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), the team’s leading scorer and someone who eschews violence.  To him, there is a right way and wrong way of being an athlete, and the Hanson brothers represent the latter.  However, the Chiefs keep losing, despite the rumors started by Reggie that the Chiefs are about to be sold and moved to Florida.  His next tactic is to get their opponents riled up enough to throw punches at him, which begins to work.  However, things really turn around when he starts giving ice time to the Hanson brothers.  To describe their style of play, I will tell you a joke: I once went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.  At turns, they are going into the stands in order to take on fans that throw stuff at them, and other times they are being sought by police and being arrested.  Due to their popularity, Joe bails them out in order to keep the revenue they are generating going.  While the Chiefs are experiencing success, there are a few matters bugging Reggie.  First and foremost is Francine.  While he is out with his teammates, he sees her at the same bar with another man.  Despite him being there with another woman, he begins making phone calls to check on her.  When Ned’s wife, Lily Braden (Lindsay Crouse), finally leaves Ned because of her Ivy League educated husband’s unwillingness to give up what is to her a dead-end profession, she comes to stay with Reggie.  Reggie thinks this could be what sparks more aggressive play out of Ned, but the coach is wrong.  Of broader significance to Reggie is figuring out the identity of the team’s owner.  Blackmailing Joe finally gets him the information, and Reggie is surprised when it is a woman, Anita MacCambridge (Kathryn Walker).  Regardless, Anita is amused by Reggie’s attempts at making the Chiefs more profitable, but ultimately her decision is going to be to abandon the team as a tax loss.  Reggie is not happy by the decision, and he decides to tell his players to play the right way instead of with their fists in the upcoming championship game.  Because of the reputation the Chiefs have made for themselves with their violence, the other squad brings in a number of former skaters with a reputation for being goons.  What proceeds is less a hockey contest and more of a bloody wrestling match.  However, because Reggie had told them truth about what will happen after the season and to go out there and compete normally, they spend the first half of the evening being literally pummeled.  The crowd, and more importantly, Joe, react negatively, and the general manager goes into the locker room between periods to convince them to change their tune.  As such, when they get back on the ice, it is the complete opposite.  In the midst of the chaos, Francine and Lily arrive, the latter having had a makeover thanks to the former.  With Ned sitting on the bench aloof from the brawl, he notices his wife.  She waves, and he responds by doing a skating striptease.  So appalled is the other side that they punch the referee for not stopping Ned’s display, resulting in their disqualification and the Chiefs winning.  The final scene is a parade for the victorious team, with Reggie trying and failing to convince Francine to come with him to Minnesota and his new franchise.

There is a lot of failure in Slap Shot.  Businesses are going under, relationships are falling apart, and this Catholic would call all the fighting to be an unsuccessful outcome.  More broadly, sports are about learning to deal with consistent defeat.  Not every eponymous attempt is going to result in a goal.  In baseball, the most prosperous hitters make an out roughly seventy percent of the time.  Religion is far from this movie, though in one scene we do see the Hanson brothers crossing themselves.  There is a lot of blasphemy in it, as in taking the Lord’s name in vain, besides a whole host of foul language.  For the record, I will also mention here the nudity, which I always contend as being unnecessary, and I am not talking about that which is seen in the locker room.  In other words, there are better places to get the kind of lesson that I am about to discuss, namely that the film does teach how to cope with life’s disappointments.  Initially, the answer is not a Christian one.  As has been described, instead of playing harder or working on their skills, Reggie decides to curry favor with the masses and physically intimidate all the Chiefs’ opponents.  God allows us to be tested not because he hates us, but in order to refine our faith.  Besides, good or bad, everything is a grace from Him.  We tend to only think of God when things are good.  One need look little further than the #blessed crowd.  I wonder how many of those same people take to social media to say the same things when they are challenged.  Reggie eventually realizes the damage he is doing to everyone by having his team play like a bunch of thugs, and it takes somebody providing a non-violent display for the lesson to strike home.  As Ned kept insisting, there is a right way of doing things, and Faith is about understanding how doing so is the real blessing.

It is not a blessing to watch Slap Shot.  I would not even call it a decent hockey movie.  For whatever reason, it has stood the test of time as a classic, and that is the only reason I watched it.  Otherwise, I would avoid this one.