News Article: Aleksi Saarela bashes Carolina Hurricanes in a western Finnish newspaper

[Lempo]

Micheal Oatgiant was very good in his sheriff role.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I must disagree about the "idiot owner" statement. The owner is not an idiot. The owner is The Invisible Hand of Capitalism. She's absent the whole movie, no one knows who she is or what she wants, and then at the very end, turns out that she's someone who is happy to watch the team burn so she can take a tax loss -- just like the steel mill owners are happy to watch the town burn.

Nancy O'Dowd was writing about the Chiefs/Jets, sure -- but she was also writing an elegy to Johnstown, and a whole way of life in America. Film is hella deep.

I'm thinking of the GM, then. He's pretty clearly a send-up of the old-school GMs who would end a guy's career to save a nickel and then replace him with a bouncer-on-skates just to sell a few more tickets.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Seriously though, it's very obviously a criticism of how decreasingly-talented players were expected to physically beat the **** out of each other in a non-hockey bloodsport for the entertainment of idiot fans and the enrichment of idiot owners. Like, you cannot possibly watch that movie with the word "satire" in mind and not see this written all over every scene.

But bring up Slap Shot at the bar, and it's all "yeaaaahhhh the Hanson Brothers baby! Old time hockey!!!"

I interpreted it as how "The Code" of hockey in which players policed themselves, granting if it had ever existed, had since devolved into empty cliche meant to enable the transformation of the beautiful game into modern bloodsport. That's the joke about Eddie Shore- he played hard, but he played the game to win, not to beat each other senseless in senseless violence. I agree that it as a fairly genuine, if more essential than literal, representation of minor league hockey in the '70's/'80's as modern day gladiatorial fights. It's what makes it such an irony when someone brings up the movie non-satirically as if it's a defense of The Code.

But I dig the betrayal of the working class theme Hank came up with. Never saw that.

 

[Lempo]

So apparently after the real life Johnstown Jets folded in 1977, they were succeeded by Johnstown Chiefs in 1987 which team relocated to Greenville, SC in 2010.

We. We own the Chiefs.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

I interpreted it as how "The Code" of hockey in which players policed themselves, granting if it had ever existed, had since devolved into empty cliche meant to enable the transformation of the beautiful game into modern bloodsport. That's the joke about Eddie Shore- he played hard, but he played the game to win, not to beat each other senseless in senseless violence. I took it as a fairly genuine, if more essential than literal, representation of minor league hockey in the '70's/'80's as modern day gladiatorial fights. It's what makes it such an irony when someone brings up the movie non-satirically as if it's a defense of The Code.

But I dig the betrayal of the working class theme Hank came up with. Never saw that.

Your interpretation is also entirely correct.

We won't even get into the sexual politics. That's a whole 'nother movie. Three movies in one! At least!

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Also: Nancy Dowd thought she was working on a documentary until George Roy Hill told her she was working on a farce, presumably because a documentary would be too painful to watch.

 

[Joe McGrath]

I'm thinking of the GM, then. He's pretty clearly a send-up of the old-school GMs who would end a guy's career to save a nickel and then replace him with a bouncer-on-skates just to sell a few more tickets.

Don’t you besmirch Joe McGrath like that.

“They came here tonight...to scout the Chiefs. Not this bunch of......p***yes!”

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Don’t you besmirch Joe McGrath like that.

“They came here tonight...to scout the Chiefs. Not this bunch of......*****es!”

Hey, that reminds me... can you get me a cheap skate sharpening machine?

 

[Joe McGrath]

Hey, that reminds me... can you get me a cheap skate sharpening machine?

No, but I still do have a slightly used bus.

 

[DaveG]

We can make a deal... Wait.... They didn't make it look mean did they?

 

[Porvari]

Ah, Slap Shot. The 8AM PE bandy class the day after it was first shown on Finnish TV got a bit...raucous.