FanHouse Slap Shot

As you know, your friendly neighborhood ("Ahem, neighbourhood" - Jes and Mirtle) FanHouse bloggers are proud disciples of "Slap Shot," the 1977 Paul Newman classic that gave the world Reggie Dunlop, the Hanson Brothers and roughly 10,000 other references that have become currency of cool amongst puckheads in the know. Comparing another hockey film to "Slap Shot" is futile. But sometimes a comedy that skewers the conventions of another sport hits theaters, and critics compare its virtues or tone to "Slap Shot"-- much in the same way people used to compare Alexandre Daigle to Wayne Gretzky.

Following in the tradition of "Blades of Glory" and "Talladega Nights" (well, hopefully more of the latter than the former), Will Ferrell's basketball comedy "Semi-Pro" opens on Friday. Variety reviewer Joe Leydon opens his critique thusly:

Very much in the tradition of "Slap Shot," George Roy Hill's raucously funny and foul-mouthed 1977 laffer about the misadventures of a minor-league hockey team, "Semi-Pro" scores big laughs with the rowdy play-by-play of hard-luck hoopsters struggling for professional survival. For some auds, Will Ferrell doing a full-court press in a white-guy afro alone will be worth the price of admission.

I haven't seen the film -- although I plan to -- but the production photo above certainly evokes memories of that classic scene in "Slap Shot" when Denis Lemieux broke the game down. ("Icing happen when the puck come down, bang, you know, before the other guy.") Where I think most critics get it wrong is when they reduce "Slap Shot" to a "raucously funny and foul-mouthed" film, forgetting its keen observations about sex, aging and self-identity. All due respect to the screenwriter on "Semi-Pro," but somehow I doubt the man who also gave the world "Old School" and "Road Trip" will be able to match Nancy Dowd's nuance. The real question, however, when it comes to "Semi-Pro" and "Slap Shot": Which extra in the new Will Ferrell movie will end up coaching the Wizards in 30 years?

Update: The reviews are in. Twenty-seven percent on the Rotten Tomatometer as of Friday morning. This is "Bewitched" bad.

The most immediate difference between the recently deposed Glen Hanlon and new Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau -- besides a power play that has suddenly eliminated the urge from Caps fans to scream "decline the penalty" during home games? Postgame press conference demeanor.

Even after victories, Hanlon's words were smart but measured. Boudreau, by contrast, is a virtual quote machine. The 52-year-old coach has been kicking around the minor leagues since the 1992-93 season, waiting for this chance, and I can imagine he made many a bush-league scribe happy with his postgame comments. After Saturday night's 5-2 win over Carolina, a reporter said he had heard Capitals brawler Donald Brashear call the coach "Mr. Boudreau," and wondered if that was out of respect or fear. "Well, it ain't fear," the coach deadpanned.

Boudreau's the kind of coach who tells the media that "it's pretty cool" to finally have a shot in the NHL after managing the bench for teams like the Muskegon Fury, the Fort Wayne Komets and the Lowell Lock Monsters. He's the kind of coach that will go into a humorous story about his son in a youth hockey tournament during a postgame press conference, and begin that story by saying, "I won't bore ya's..."

By all accounts, he's a solid hockey coach with a classic hockey personality to match. Throw in a lifetime in the minor leagues, and he's the personification of Slap Shot lore. So it shouldn't shock anyone that Boudreau has an interesting connection to the 1977 Paul Newman hockey classic.

As FanHouse's Eric McErlain noted earlier this summer, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Slap Shot, hands-down the greatest hockey movie of all-time and perhaps the greatest sports comedy in film history...at least compared to the ones that didn't feature Ted Knight and a dancing gopher. Through the miracle of YouTube, here's the original trailer for Slap Shot:


To the pantheon of Slap Shot drinking games, I'd like to add another: Take a shot every time Paul Newman's name is mentioned in the trailer above. It seems like the future salad dressing king is pimped every few seconds, and rightfully so; looking back at that teaser, Slap Shot could have easily been the kind of flaccid sports satire you'd expect Rob Schneider to appear in had it not been for two factors: Newman's hilarious and magnetic performance and Nancy Dowd's script, which was as smart about hockey as it was about the sexes. The Hanson Brothers were more memorable, but it was Newman's Reggie Dunlop that elevated the film to a classic.

But what real-life player inspired one of sports cinema's greatest characters? Contrary to what's been commonly accepted, former NHL coach Tom McVie believes it could be him.