A Textual Analysis of Ice Hockey Movies From 1977 - Present

Billy Hild
Media Theory - Communication Revolution
17 May 2014



Abstract
This paper is a textual analysis of eleven hockey movies created from 1977 until 2011. It
looks at the underlying themes that surround the protagonist teams of each movie (are they a
Cinderella story?), how they portray the game itself (violent, finesse, etc.), how dedicated they
are (how much hockey footage they show), and how realistic the movies are compared to the
actual game itself. It was discovered that a large number of hockey movies celebrate fighting
(and overall violence) of the sport. Regardless of the time that they are depicting(it ranges from
the 1940s to the present), many of the movies are feel good sports stories that involve ragged
teams or individuals overcoming obstacles. The amount of time they show hockey on-screen
varies, but more than half of the movies studied consisted of at least 25% of footage (up to 45%).
Perhaps the most interesting discovery was how use of color on the teams uniforms and their
size are able to distinguish the roles of characters in the films: many bad teams are large, wear
red and black, and appear machine-like, while protagonist players/characters wear bright colors
(or red white and blue).
Introduction
Of the four major professional sports in the United States, ice hockey was the least
popular as of 2004: the television ratings are usually the lowest, and the sponsorship from
national brands is not as high as it is with baseball or football (Markus). Still, the National
Hockey League has made great strides in the last ten years with boosting its popularity, to the
point where this years outdoor Winter Classic was the second highest rated regular season
hockey game ever, only behind the 2011 Winter Classic (Iversen, 2014). Furthermore, the NHL
has actually been outplaying the NBA in their current playoff seasons, with Forbes magazine
stating, According to TiqIQ, the average price for a second-round game in the NHL Playoffs
this year has been $403.16. That average is 37% above the average price of $294.38 for a
second-round game in the NBA Playoffs (Lawrence, 2014). Finally, the 2010 Winter Olympic
gold medal game (between the United States and Canada) was a record-setting game for hockey
ratings, being the highest rated hockey game on television since 1980 (NHL.com, 2010).
Ice hockey itself is a unique sport that requires a high skillset from the majority of its
players. Players on the ice must have the chemistry between their teammates to pass and create
scoring opportunities whenever they are playing. Players must know how to hit, pass and shoot
with a stick, and defend all while moving on a pair of skates, a much less natural motion than
simply walking or running. Players will have roles besides the position they play: some will have
the sole objective to score, others will specialize in being two-way offensive and defensive
players, and others still will try to annoy the other team into accidentally drawing penalties.
Finally there are enforcers, who have the job of using their presence to ensure that star players on
the team do not get hurt with hard hits from other teams.
The sports movie genre is generally profitable. The Mighty Ducks was such a
commercially well received movie ($50 million against a $10 million budget) that the NHLs
Anaheim Ducks were originally called the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, after the teams name in the
movie served as owner Disneys market research (LaPointe, 1992). Another movie for this
paper, Miracle, grossed over $64 million dollars at the box office. Many hockey movies have
been released over the course of the last 40 years, and they all depict the multi-faceted game in a
different way at first glance.
Literature Review
Due to the nature of hockey as a sport, it felt obvious to review research on violence in
hockey as a whole. Fighting has been a part of hockey for decades. However reception that
fighting has recently received among analysts has not always been positive. Kale writes,
Supporters of fighting argue that it has always been integral to hockey. This brutal tradition
should be given up now that research has shown that repeated head trauma can cause severe
progressive brain damage (Kale, 2012). Still, players insist, according to Pappas, McKenry, and
Catlett (2004), Players enhance their value to their team by demonstrating toughness through
display of fighting skills; indeed, the ability to fight effectively becomes a coveted trait,
operating even as a means to indirectly win games through intimidation of the opposition and
targeting of key opposing players and The findings of this study indicate that interpersonal
aggression is common in the lives of these hockey players, both on and off the ice (p. 300). The
players in this study were former collegiate players.
One potentially troubling note about violence in hockey is the notion that much of the
violence is not checked and can lead to unethical behavior. Naturally, if players (at any level) are
allowed to get away with it, it may teach them that it is ok and the violence may gradually
escalate. According to Sheldon and Aimar (2001), athletes are often able to engage in illegal
aggressive behaviors that are reinforced by successful outcomes in the immediate future (p.
307). Ultimately, there is a masculine attitude surrounding hockey players: fighting is a duty that
they have to each other as teammates to ensure the teams victory. Some players even go as far
to say that the more penalties and the more physical their teammate is, the better, with Weinstein,
Smith, and Wiesenthal (1995) finding in their study that, Junior A players who had a higher
ratio of penalty minutes were ranked as more competent by their teammates (p. 843).
Not only do the players view fighting and physicality as an important part of hockey, the
devoted fans do as well. According to a study done by Paul, Weinbach and Robbins in 2013, for
each additional fight per game that the home team averages, attendance at [American Hockey
League, the top hockey minor league in North America] games increased by almost 1,000 fans
(p. 31). Ultimately, all kinds of people associated with hockey view the integrated violence and
fighting as a crucial part to the game from interest and competitive standpoints.
The sports film genre has proven in the past to exhibit the more unethical practices that
could happen in the sports that they depict. According to Fountain and Finley (2009), The
results of [their] study provided support for the notion that gamesmanship has become more
important than sportsmanship...The effect is that cheating, violence, and other forms of deviance
come to be viewed as simply what must be done to win (Fountain and Finley, 2009). This can
prove to be a major problem, as Fountain and Finley (2009) suggest that, If young athletes
model the same type of behavior as the players in these films with the expectation that the
coaches, parents, community, and athletic system will tolerate the deviant behavior but this does
not happen, the athletes could be surprised to find out they may face severe consequences.
The Cinderella/"rags to riches" storyline is an often-used framework for sports movies.
Beyond the movies that will be discussed in this research paper, movies such as the Rocky
movies and Cinderella Man are examples of this. Briley's (2005) theory is that the reason for this
is the Cinderella storyline, "[perpetuate] the idea that athletics provide a model for social
mobility in which hard work will prevail in the best tradition of Benjamin Franklin and Horatio
Alger" (p. 17).
A review of the selected films revealed that a majority of the movies contained the same
or highly similar color schemes and stereotypes for teams. Color is something that is very
important in characterization and is something we do without even realizing it. Historically, dark
colors are associated with evil, antagonists, and villains. Black itself is the absence of color.
Musician Jack White once said that he prefers to use red, black, and white as a color scheme,
saying, I also think they are the most powerful color combination of all time, from a Coca-Cola
can to a Nazi banner. Those colors strike chords with people. In Japan, they are honorable colors.
When you see a bride in a white gown, you immediately see innocence in that. Red is anger and
passion. It is also sexual. And black is the absence of all that (Fricke, 2005).
Color is also frequently used in advertising. The 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, violet) are typically classified as warm or cool colors based on the feelings that
we may subconsciously experience when we see them. According to Talaei (2013), Yellow is a
good symbol for a heavy industrial strength for durable products, while darker blue colors
illustrate fear and grief (p. 27). Furthermore, it can be used as brand identification for food
(McDonalds yellow, Coca-Colas red, etc.), used to set the mood in a high-class restaurant (with
blue lighting), and Singh (2006) also notes that objects, seem larger and heavier under a red
light. On the contrary...objects seem smaller and lighter under blue light (p. 786). Still, Singh
(2006) points out that, Some feel that human responses to colors are stable, therefore applicable
to everyone, whereas others disagree, asserting that responses and preferences to colors vary
across culture, gender, and, age, among others (p. 786). Regardless of the differences in
interpretation that we may have between colors, it is generally agreed upon that, "Color has
always been used by human beings as an aid to recognize important information...it can aid an
individual's memory in retaining and recalling information in many activities..." (Pelet and
Papadopoulou, 2012, 440).
Methods
The following eleven movies were selected for analysis for the sake of this paper, ordered
by chronological release: Slap Shot (1977), The Mighty Ducks (1992), D2: The Mighty Ducks
(1994), Sudden Death (1995), D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996), Mystery, Alaska (1998), Miracle
(2004), The Rocket (2005), The Love Guru (2008), Slap Shot 3 (2008), and Goon (2011). Other
movies I tried to look for and acquire, but were not in print or otherwise able to be acquired.
I initially wanted to test if there was a correlation between the movies releases and the
average NHL ratings on television. This proved to be fruitless for two primary reasons. First, the
ratings date only back to recent times, the only real information I found that exists prior to that
was the highest rated NHL games in its history (and these were individual games as opposed to a
full season slate). Second, Miracle was released only a few months before the National Hockey
League would end up cancelling an entire season due to a labor dispute, so there obviously
would be no television ratings at that time. The Rocket was released in Canada (and later, the
United States) only a few months after the NHL had ended that labor dispute and resumed play.
With the movie list assembled, I chose to do a textual analysis of the films relationships
to the game of ice hockey. They could be broken down into the following research questions:
RQ1) How is it depicted? Would it be as a finesse sport, or as a gritty, physical one?
RQ2) Is there a recurring theme between all of these movies, as they all focus on the
same sport, or is the only common thing between them that they simply show the game
on a superficial level?
RQ3) How dedicated to hockey are the movies; does it celebrate the game, or is it just
used as a convenient plot device? Finally, how much hockey do they actually show,
relative to the rest of the movie?
To answer RQ3, I performed a content analysis for when a game or a practice was shown
on screen, as well as cuts to the scoreboard, to the bench during a game, or player introductions
(as these are all still part of the game experience itself). I did not count the game being shown on
a television screen unless the camera was obviously focusing on it (there were many moments in
Sudden Death where the game being played was shown in the background on a small television,
but it is clear that it is only there to provide ambience and the focus was on other dialogue). After
getting the total movie time (excluding credits) and the total hockey time, a percentage would
be calculated to see how dedicated the movies were to the sport.
RQ3) Results of Total Hockey Footage
As far as hockey footage shown, the results typically varied by movie. Miracle had the
most actual depicted time, with 46 minutes and 29 seconds total out of a two hour and nine
minute movie, accounting for approximately 36% of the movie total. However, D2: The Mighty
Ducks had the highest percentage of hockey footage compared to the total movie runtime, where
almost 45% of the movie showed hockey footage. Sudden Death had the lowest percentage, with
only 14 minutes and 38 seconds of hockey footage, good for 14.5% (The Love Guru actually
only had 14 minutes and 13 seconds, but the percentage was higher as the movie was much
shorter). The median percentage was 30.9%, while the mean was a very similar 31.2%.
RQ2a) Discussion of Teams Game Outcomes
The game outcomes for each team in each movie were noted, to partially answer RQ2.
This was occasionally difficult to do, as the movies did not always say whether the team
involved won or lost their games. In Miracle, the Olympic hockey team is shown winning five
games, losing one, and tying 2. Of those two ties, one (Norway) is viewed by the coach as a loss,
while the other (Sweden) is viewed as an important moral victory. Of those two pre-Olympic
losses, the United States would come back to defeat both of those teams in the Olympics. In
Sudden Death, only one game is shown, and it is never clear which team wins as the movies
main conflict prevents the game from being completed (the two teams met in the Stanley Cup
Finals three years earlier, with Pittsburgh winning). In The Mighty Ducks, the team already has
amassed nine losses at the movies onset and for the rest of the movie will lose three more, tie
one, and finally win four (including the championship game). For the sequel, they win every
game except their first against Iceland, who they defeat in the championship game anyway. In
D3, the team only plays 3 games for a record of one win, one loss, and one (embarrassing) tie.
Most of the games in The Rocket are not depicted as wins or losses (there are at least two wins
and one loss), but it is pointed out at the end that Richard helped the team win five Stanley Cups
over his career. Finally, Slap Shots Charlestown Chiefs are a doormat when the movie starts,
they end up losing 3 more games in the movies early portion, but rallies to win at least six others
(some not shown on screen) including the championship game by forfeit. The team of Slap Shot
3 loses their first game, but ends up winning five others over the course of the movie, including a
championship over the team that previously defeated them. The Toronto Maple Leafs rally from
losing their first three games of the Stanley Cup Finals to win four straight games (and the
Stanley Cup itself) in The Love Guru. Refer to Appendix C for more information on the teams
game outcomes.
RQ2b) Discussion of Movie Themes
From a thematic sense, many of the movies seem to have the same basic outline. The
three Mighty Ducks movies, Miracle, Slap Shot, Slap Shot 3, Goon, and The Rocket all seem to
have a rags to riches or redemption storyline that is typical of many sports movies (Rudy,
Rocky, Invincible, etc.). The teams in every movie are either constant losers or a group of people
with very different backgrounds that have the odds against them. By the end of each movie, they
are all champions of their respective kingdom. Maurice Richard had many injuries early in his
NHL career and it was unknown if he would be able to keep playing. The Mighty Ducks teams
had to create team chemistry in the first two movies. When we are first exposed to them, the
team is playing with non-matching uniforms, jersey numbers created from masking tape, and (if
they are wearing helmets at all) football helmets instead of proper hockey helmets. By the third
movie, they were clearly one unified team (all choosing to attend the same school together), but
now had a new coach that the entire team did not get along with and had to learn to work with
before they could win games. In Miracle, old collegiate rivalries prevent the team from working
together at first and the powerful Soviet team embarrasses them 10-3 right before the Olympics
begin. In Slap Shot, the Charlestown Chiefs are shown as a constantly losing team with minimal
fan support and the player/coach later finds out the team has a strong chance of never playing
again after the season. Slap Shot 3 has a similar story, as a real estate developer is looking to
totally demolish and rebuild the town, with the success of the hockey team possibly preventing
that from happening. Mystery, Alaska takes a slight detour from the prototypical underdog, in
that the underdog team actually loses (to a professional team), and the close game is treated as a
moral victory. Finally, Goon tells the story of a mentally challenged bouncer who is able to
become a hockey superstar when his talents as an enforcer are discovered. Sudden Death does
not have any real theme to it, it is simply an action movie using a hockey game and arena as its
backdrop.
Discussion of Color Imagery in Team Uniforms
Almost all of the movies use color to portray who the good teams and bad teams
were. In the Mighty Ducks trilogy, the primary antagonist teams of each movie (the Hawks,
Team Iceland, and the varsity high school team, respectively) are all predominantly colored
black. In Miracle, the Soviet team is only depicted wearing their solid red colored uniforms,
while the United States is wearing their familiar and patriotic red, white, and blue jerseys. Even
in Slap Shot, when the Charlestown Chiefs have a white, yellow, and blue color scheme, they
still have shoulder patches depicting winged stars and stripes with the words, All-America
City. For the sequel, Slap Shot 3, the Ice Hounds team that the new Charlestown Chiefs plays
for a championship also is wearing a predominantly red uniform with black logos and numbers.
Mystery, Alaska was a notable exception to this rule: the New York Rangers, who play the
protagonist team in the movies signature game, are also red, white, and blue and enter the game
skating next to a Statue of Liberty figure in the teams colors. While the Chicago Blackhawks are
not explicitly the bad guys in Sudden Death (they have no idea of the terrorist happenings in
the arena), they are wearing their red and black uniforms while winning a game that (for the
storys sake) they cannot win. Furthermore, the Penguins players in the dressing room before the
game are all wearing light blue undershirts (this may be a coincidence), while the main villian is
wearing a dark tuxedo. Slap Shot and Goon both share the orange, black, and white fighting team
concept. At the time of Slap Shots release, the Philadelphia Flyers had come off of a season
where they had lost the Stanley Cup Final and won the two before that, with a roster that was
referred to as the Broad Street Bullies due to their very physical level of play. It should not be
viewed as a coincidence that the opposing team in Slap Shots championship game, which
assembles a roster of goons specifically for that one game, have an orange, white, and black
color scheme that is very similar to the one the Flyers used at the time. The same can be said for
the original team that the main character plays for in Goon. Refer to Appendix A for more
information on each teams primary colors.
RQ1a) Discussion of Opponents General Appearance
A recurring theme in the movies (and many sports movies) is to make the adversaries
appear bigger, stronger, and more physically intimidating than the protagonists. In Miracle, the
first game against the Soviet Union shows a slow-motion shot of the Soviet players being much
taller than the United States team, and have expressions that are emotionless. The same can be
said about the Hawks, Team Iceland, and varsity hockey team in the three Mighty Ducks movies
respectively. For the Hawks team and Team Iceland, their uniforms cover their entire body,
making them lose their human characteristics and appear more machine-like. In Mystery, Alaska,
the New York Rangers get off of a helicopter wearing black jackets, their faces are never shown
because they do not fit on camera, with one person asking if all of the players were on steroids.
These stereotypes do not appear to apply to the teams in the Slap Shot movies, Goon, or The
Love Guru.
RQ1b) Discussion of Fighting and Overall Violence
Ice hockey is a unique sport among the major North American professional sports in that
it is the only one where fighting is allowed within the rules of gameplay. It is also more physical
than basketball and baseball (and on par with football), checking and hitting opponents is a
crucial part of the game. Every film, even the childrens ones (such as The Mighty Ducks
trilogy), all depict fighting or violence in hockey in some way or another.
Violence and fighting play a huge part in some of the movies. Goon and Slap Shot are
two movies built almost entirely around fighting, where much of the game footage shown is of
brutal fights that leave blood smeared on the rink, the players faces, and their uniforms. Some of
the games played in these movies have no actual gameplay; they are just massive fights, and the
championship game of Slap Shot actually ends on forfeit because a player punches the referee.
Aside from the violence in Slap Shot, the word fuck is spoken 98 times throughout the movie
and players repeatedly use vulgar insults (the main player told an opponent his wife was a
lesbian, something that would not be accepted in any way today). Slap Shot 3 is also a violent
hockey movie, but it has more of an immature teenager feel to it. For example, the Hanson
brothers subtly clothesline an opponent as he skates by them on the bench, and one team forfeits
a game because it is implied the Chiefs gave them food poisoning. The Love Guru also depicts
fighting: the guru himself tells the main character the key to getting his playing back on track is
to not fight. Later on, there is a bench clearing brawl that is started after the aforementioned main
character gets into a fight with another player that his wife left him for. Finally, the Mighty
Ducks movies all portray violence as well: the first movie has two players from the Hawks cheap
shot a Duck player in the championship game after the coach tells them to do so, and the players
all get in a fight in school. The second movies two Iceland games are physical, hard-hitting
affairs where a player gets injured from illegal hits. The third movies first game between the
Ducks and the varsity team is portrayed as an epic matchup. It is a very physical game with
numerous would-be penalties, played in the dark with empty stands. An opera piece can be heard
over the game itself, adding to the atmosphere. It ends with a bench clearing brawl.
The rest of the movies have either minor fights or larger fights playing a subtler role.
Miracle only has one real on-ice fight, during the teams first practice, but the central game is
played during the Cold War and the movie makes several references to that. The Rocket does not
have any fighting in the movies games themselves, but the suspension of Maurice Richard for
the rest of the season being played was enough to cause Montreal citizens to riot at the next game
(causing it to be forfeited) and having it spill over into the streets. Sudden Death is the one movie
with no in-game hockey fighting, but the overbearing plot of the movie involves numerous
instances of hand to hand combat, including one duel above the now-open arena (Pittsburghs
arena had a retractable roof), while the hockey game below is in a sudden death overtime
session. Of all of the movies, Mystery, Alaska has the least amount of fighting: it is restricted to
when the Mystery team watches a New York Ranger game on television for fifteen seconds, all
of which is a fight between two players.
What I noticed throughout the movies is that the violence was almost always tolerated.
More specifically, cheap hits in The Mighty Ducks movies went almost entirely un-penalized by
the referees. The sole negative feedback really was in D3, where the team captain's mother
chewed him out for breaking his stick against the goal and throwing his helmet off in the penalty
box in a tough game. Slap Shot had a group of police officers attempt to arrest the Hanson
brothers after a game, but this was not a successful venture. The Chiefs teams in Slap Shot are
not able to win unless they play dirty hockey and create fights. This agrees with Fountain and
Finleys concern that the enabling of violence in sports movies may encourage real players to do
the same thing and believe they can in turn get away with it. Refer to Appendix B for more
information on the depiction of violence in each movie.
RQ1) Discussion of In-Game Realism
The movies realism demonstrated to be a mixed bag. The Rocket and Miracle, being
biographical films, were the most realistic. They are filmed almost as if the viewer is right
alongside the subjects as the events depicted actually happened. The Mighty Ducks, Sudden
Death, Goon, and the Slap Shot movies however, were entirely unrealistic and most of the
movies stunts would never be able to be done in a real game. The teams of the Mighty Ducks
movies have a signature play called the Flying V, where the five skaters on the ice skate
downwards in a V formation looking to score. In reality, this could never be accomplished, as the
puck must enter the opposing teams offensive zone before any players from the attacking team.
Either it would end in an offsides, or with the defensive team collapsing the play before it got
into the zone, leading to a huge advantage for that other team (this actually happened in the two
sequels). In D2: The Mighty Ducks, with the team playing in a junior international tournament,
they receive national attention in publications like USA Today as if it was the Olympics. In real
life, these sorts of tournaments would not receive such coverage. The cast is almost entirely the
same, with some new players as well. In a tournament such as this, it is hard to believe a national
team would consist of so many players from one team. From a playing perspective, in the second
game against Iceland, one player is called for a penalty when he throws a rope lasso around an
opponent. Another players signature shot is a knucklepuck, where the puck repeatedly moves
up and down after it is shot at the net. By the laws of physics, this is impossible. In Sudden
Death, the main character at one point ends up impersonating the Penguins goaltender and plays
in the game itself. Given the locker room security for NHL teams, this again would never be able
to happen. The final movie, Mystery, Alaska, shows hockey from a mostly realistic sense in
terms of how the game is played, but the premise of the movie is not realistic, and if an NHL
team was to play a team of villagers from Alaska, the game would probably be much more of a
defeat than it was in the movie.
RQ1c) Discussion of Game Portrayal
Tying into the overall realism is the imagery presented of the game itself in these movies.
In The Rocket, the players jerseys are made out of a wool or fabric material. Players did not
wear helmets, and goalies did not even wear masks. The first game, in Richards junior league, is
played outdoors on an undersized rink. While a complex glass and netting system now separates
the spectators from the ice, there was no barrier at this point except for the boards that surround
the entire rink and short chain-link fencing behind both goals. By the end of the film, we can see
that rinks now have plexiglass installed around the rink, although the board advertisements are
not yet visible. Slap Shot is chronologically the next movie (as well as the flashback sequences
of The Mighty Ducks). We can see that goalies now wear masks, although they are the famous
primitive white fiberglass face masks. Players still do not wear helmets (the NHL itself did not
mandate helmets for new players until 1979) and the arenas have no advertisements around the
boards yet, but the jerseys are a modern material. Miracle was similar, but all players were
wearing helmets by then and modern goalie masks began to see circulation. By The Mighty
Ducks and Sudden Death, the NHL rinks portrayed in the movies more or less resemble their
modern form, with the ice being painted with team logos, advertisements surround the boards,
and video scoreboards now hang from above center ice. The players are now playing with
modern equipment, even having transparent visors on their helmets (for eye protection), and
goalies were wearing the modern masks that they do today. It should be noted that junior and
amateur leagues require helmets with face shields (in the case of The Mighty Ducks).
Conclusion
It is no secret that hockey is one of the worlds most physical sports. It is also no secret
that the violence that stems from the physicality of the game is controversial, with diehard
hockey purists viewing it as necessary and supporting it. The movies that base part or all of
their respective stories on the sport of ice hockey also celebrate hockey violence. However, these
movies also celebrate the hockey team and the hockey player, and how odds can always be
overcome with team unity. Finally, and most importantly, they celebrate the game that they are
depicting as other sports movies do.




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Appendix A: Team uniform colors vs. main opponent team colors
Movie Team Team Colors Primary
Opponent
Primary
Opponent
Team Colors
Slap Shot Charlestown
Chiefs
Yellow, white,
blue, USA logo
on shoulder
Syracuse
Bulldogs
Orange, white,
black
The Mighty
Ducks
The Ducks Forest Green,
Purple, Yellow
The Hawks Black
D2: The Mighty
Ducks
The Ducks/Team
USA
Red, white, blue,
later changed to
white, purple,
and teal
Team Iceland Black
D3: The Mighty
Ducks
The
Ducks/Freshman
Hockey team
White, purple,
and teal
The Varsity
Warriors
Black, red
Miracle Team USA Red, white, and
blue
Soviet Union
national team
Red, white
The Love Guru Toronto Maple
Leafs
Blue and white Los Angeles
Kings
Black, purple,
white
Goon Highlanders Blue and orange No primary
opponent

Slap Shot 3 Charlestown
Chiefs
Yellow, white,
blue
Ice Hounds Red, black
Mystery, Alaska Team Mystery Brown, gray,
white
New York
Rangers
Red, white, blue
Sudden Death Pittsburgh
Penguins
White, yellow,
black (accent)
Chicago
Blackhawks
Red, black
The Rocket Montreal
Canadiens
Red, white, blue No primary
opponent




Appendix B: Depiction of Fighting and Violence
Movie Team Fist
Fighting?
Injury from
playing?
Illegal hits? Bench
Clearing
Brawl?
Slap Shot Charlestown
Chiefs
Yes Yes - but not
serious
Yes Yes
The Mighty
Ducks
The Ducks Yes Yes Yes No
D2: The
Mighty Ducks
The
Ducks/Team
USA
No Yes Yes No
D3: The
Mighty Ducks
The
Ducks/Fresh
man Hockey
team
Yes No Yes Yes
Miracle Team USA Yes Yes Yes - Soviet
Union slashes
and scores a
goal
No
The Love
Guru
Toronto
Maple Leafs
Yes No No Yes
Goon Highlanders Yes Yes Yes Yes
Slap Shot 3 Charlestown
Chiefs
Yes No Yes - from
spectators
Yes
Mystery,
Alaska
Team
Mystery
Yes Yes No No
Sudden Death Pittsburgh
Penguins
Yes* No No No
The Rocket Montreal
Canadiens
No Yes Yes** Yes***
*fighting was between movies characters, apart from the game itself
**Richard was penalized and suspended for this hit (on a referee)
***Suspension of Richard led to riot from fans at game

Appendix C: Depiction of protagonist player/team success and achievement
Movie Team Wins
Championship/Main
game?
Team/player losing
beforehand?
Slap Shot Charlestown Chiefs Yes Yes
The Mighty Ducks The Ducks Yes Yes
D2: The Mighty
Ducks
The Ducks/Team
USA
Yes No - but one game
from elimination
D3: The Mighty
Ducks
The Ducks/Freshman
Hockey team
Yes Yes
Miracle Team USA Yes Yes
The Love Guru Toronto Maple Leafs Yes Yes - main character
was in a slump
Goon Highlanders No* No - main character
was new to playing
hockey
Slap Shot 3 Charlestown Chiefs Yes Yes
Mystery, Alaska Team Mystery No** No
Sudden Death Pittsburgh Penguins N/A - game does not
finish
No
The Rocket Montreal Canadiens No*** Yes
*Game is still in progress when movie ends, implied that team wins to make playoffs
**Game is treated as a moral victory, despite the loss
***Movie writes at the end that Richard would lead Montreal to numerous other Stanley Cup
Championships