Hockey in Non-Hockey Films

With the road to the Stanley Cup commencing for the NHL it seems like as good a time as any to review how this sport has fared in Hollywood. But instead of travelling the well-worn path of such great hockey movies as Slap Shot, Miracle, and The Mighty Ducks series, I thought it might be more interesting to focus on non-hockey movies that include Canada’s finest export—no, not Molson!—in some other way, shape or form.

Batman & Robin

I’ll apologize in advance for recalling a terrible scene from an abysmal movie but I cannot overlook “the hockey team from hell!” The dynamic duo’s nemesis, Mr. Freeze, apparently has henchmen who skate around in hockey gear brandishing—you guessed it—hockey sticks. Good thing for the caped crusaders that their boots conveniently have built-in blades(!) for just such occasions.
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Clerks

Director Kevin Smith’s fondness for the sport is ever-present in the multitude of hockey sweaters he dons on a regular basis. But before Kevin Smith was a “somebody” he directed this low-budget day-in-the-life of a couple of convenience store clerks. Their daily drudgery is abated when they decide to play a little rooftop ball hockey in the middle of their day. But their hockey/happiness is short-lived after an angry customer shoots their only ball down a sewer.
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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

“Chicago is what I am…Ferris is sort of my love letter to the city.” That’s a quote from writer/director John Hughes. But he went further back to his childhood when making a key wardrobe choice for the third wheel to Ferris and girlfriend, Sloane, hypochondriac best bud Cameron Frye. Throughout the day’s events Cameron wears a Gordie Howe jersey. Decidedly not Chicago-like, the Detroit Red Wings sweater is an homage to Hughes’ days growing up in Michigan.
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Friday the 13th, Part III

Continuing on a Detroit Red Wings theme, here’s an excerpt of what I wrote in my Halloween blog entitled Best Movie Masks: Nobody was really happy with Jason wearing a bag over his head (in Part 2), so it was determined that in the upcoming 3-D version he would wear a mask. Someone suggested putting a hockey mask on him, so Martin Jay Sadoff, the film’s 3D effects supervisor and recreational hockey player, pulled out a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask from his bag of hockey gear for a make-up test. A star was born.
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Happy Gilmore

NHL-wannabe Happy Gilmore loves the game of hockey. Too bad he can’t skate. After winning a bet, however, he swaps a sheet of ice for green rolling hills as he parlays his wicked slap shot into crushing drives on the PGA tour. But Happy soon learns first-hand that the old adage “drive for show; putt for dough” is an accurate one, because just as hitting the puck hard at the rink did not guarantee goals for Happy, his 400 yard drives mean little when his putting skills are atrocious.
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Love Story

“Why would I go to a lousy hockey game?” coyly asks Jenny to Oliver. The two dashing Ivy League preppies don’t know it yet but their hockey “date” is the start of a love story that critics hated but the general public adored. The movie treats us to scenes of Oliver lacing his skates up for Harvard against Cornell and Dartmouth. Movie trivia buffs might be interested to know that real-life hockey coach Ned Harkness consented to Cornell jerseys being used only if they won the game with Harvard (which they did).
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The Road Warrior

Mel Gibson returns as ex-cop Mad Max, a burnt out “shell of a man” cruising the desolate Australian outback for precious gas, as well as vigilantism. He comes to a moral crossroads when encountering a ragtag group of “civilized” society who are besieged by marauders. The gang’s leader is Humungus (“The Lord Humungus! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Roll-a!”), a gravelly-voiced muscle man who wears a hockey mask over his disfigured face.
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The Running Man

The premise of The Running Man back in 1987 seems eerily prescient nowadays with the proliferation of reality TV programming. In front of a live studio audience and those watching at home, runners (criminals) such as Ben Richards are hunted down by stalkers with cool names like Buzzsaw, Dynamo, and Fireball. But the first professional TV assassin Ben encounters is Subzero who wears goalie equipment and wields a razor-sharp hockey stick!
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Strange Brew

SCTV hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie made the leap to the silver screen as beer-swilling, donut-scarfing, toque-wearing dimwits from the Great White North who stumble upon a nefarious world domination plot that has roots in a brewery and an asylum where brainwashed hockey players are held. (Do you think they could fit any more Canadian stereotypes in this movie’s plot?)
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Sudden Death

Hockey’s answer to football’s Black Sunday, Sudden Death stars muscles-from-Brussels Jean-Claude Van Damme as a disgraced Canadian(!) firefighter currently working security at the Stanley Cup Finals in Pittsburgh. He must save the day from baddies who’ve captured his daughter and are intent on blowing up the stadium as soon as the game ends. Among his fetes of derring-do he impersonates Pittsburgh’s goalie—even stopping a shot!—before sending the game into you-know-what and eventually becoming the hero.
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Swingers

In between moping for lost loves, coming up snake eyes in Vegas, and chasing after beautiful babies, friends Mike and Trent stop over a pal’s apartment for pizza and video games. It’s there that we find out that when playing Sega Genesis hockey you can’t have the players fight, but you can still make their heads bleed. Which is exactly what Trent does…to Wayne Gretzky. “You bitch!”
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Wayne’s World

Canadian Mike Myers recently based a whole movie (The Love Guru) around the game of ice hockey. But years before that he lovingly paid tribute to his country’s favorite sport by including a street hockey scene (“car!” “game on!”) in his SNL skit-turned-major motion picture, Wayne’s World. Living in Aurora, Illinois, the characters are both are wearing Chicago Blackhawks sweaters: goaltender Garth wearing number 35, Tony Esposito; Wayne, number 22 with his own surname Campbell on back.
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Honorable Mentions

Heat (goalie masks); Touch & Go and The Cutting Edge (hockey players); Dutch (hockey coach); Mystic River (street hockey).

I’d love to see & hear about more like these! Post your favorites in the comments section below.