How many slap shot movies are there

Editor's note: The Gazette sports staff has compiled lists of its top 15 favorite sports movies. Each day, a different staffer will share some insight into one of their favorites. Some of them are classics, watched and re-watched time and time again.

But for a few, maybe we'll be able to convince some of you to check it out for the very first time. A last-place team is folding in a burned-out city that itself is being abandoned because '10, millworkers have just been placed on waivers.

Reg Dunlop — Paul Newman, playing the hero, an aging, spent reject of a player-coach — feels the pinch. Knowing the Charlestown Chiefs are doomed once the mill closes, Dunlop crosses the hockey line, going from straight up, honest and gentlemanly to goon show.

Dunlop massages the gate and the Chiefs' prospects when he uncorks the Hanson Brothers, three violent brutes from the hockey wilds of Canada — aka the Iron League. Sure, the Hanson Brothers' first shift is cartoonish violence, but it's damn funny. Leaning over the goal and slashing across the face There's no empty-headed jock mysticism, a la 'Bull Durham. There's never enough tape and there's always too much laundry.

Or 'Slap Shot' is something close to it, something for laughs, anyway. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd followed the Johnstown Pa. Jets, her brother Ned's team, with a tape recorder and came up with a story, profanity and all. By the way, Ned Dowd played Ogilthorpe, who is still deported to Canada. This was the '70s and this was minor league hockey. There is relentless profanity, highsticking, blood, fighting, Walt makin' it look mean, a great disco soundtrack Maxine Nightingale's 'Right Back Where We Started From' and a politically incorrect character named Clarence 'Screaming Buffalo' Swamptown.

Slap Shot — Dynamite ladies at The Aces. That Hanrahan has got some problems. The Charlestown Chiefs are champions of the Federal League. Raging Bull — Literally, the most bruising portrait.

Also, the last movie my dad saw in the theater. He said it was perfect and there didn't need to be anymore movies. Rocky — The 'Rocky work song' is the music that plays over the training montage.

It's the theme for everything you've worked your ass off for in your life. Heaven Can Wait — Hilarious, charming. Allan F. Nicholls Upton as Upton as Allan Nicholls.

Brad Sullivan Wanchuk as Wanchuk. Yvan Ponton Drouin as Drouin. Matthew Cowles Charlie as Charlie. Melinda Dillon Suzanne as Suzanne. George Roy Hill. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. To make money, the team's unknown owner makes its manager, Joe McGrath, do cheesy publicity much to the players' chagrin.

Rumors abound among the players that if the local mill closes, the team will fold. Beyond efforts to reconcile with his wife Francine, who loves Reggie but doesn't love his career, Reggie begins to focus on how to renew interest in the team for a possible sale as he knows if the team folds, his hockey career is over.

Without telling anyone of his plan, he begins a rumor that the owner is negotiating a sale with a city in Florida.

He also decides that "goon" hockey - most especially using the untapped talents of the recently acquired childlike but quietly menacing Hanson brothers - is the way to renew local interest.

It works as the team begins to attract new fans, sell out games, sell out away games attended largely by their groupies, and win, which does fuel the rumor of a sale. The one team member who doesn't like this new style is Ned Braden, a college graduate who plays the game solely because he loves it. His hockey career is against the wishes of his tomboyish wife, Lily, who hates everything about Charlestown and being a hockey wife.

Reggie's goal of winning the league championship and having the team sold takes a turn when he finally meets the team's owner and discovers the owner's motivations. Ned, with his own views of what is right and wrong in hockey, may come up with an unexpected way to achieve all their goals. Did you know Edit. Trivia Paul Newman had stated on many occasions that he had more fun making this film than on any other film he has starred in, and that it remained his favorite of his own films until his death.

Goofs Just after the wives discuss the "Great Ideas of the World" set, Jean-Guy Drouin chases a player behind the net and when they come out the other side, a director in skates and a couple members of his crew can be seen on the ice in the corner of the rink.

Quotes [referee skates over to Steve Carlson during the playing of the National Anthem] Peterboro Referee : I got my eye on the three of you, guys. Connections Edited into Yoostar 2: In the Movies User reviews Review.

Rumors that the team is being sold begin to swirl, and attendance is on the rise as the violence increases, but when Dunlop discovers the owner is actually going to disband the team as a tax write-off he decides they should drop the gladiator on ice act and play some good old-fashioned hockey for their championship game. That doesn't last, though, as their opponents have adopted their own brutal tactics leading Dunlop and friends with no other option but to bring the heat too.

Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice sees the Chiefs returned to their old ways as utter failures derided by opponents and fans alike. The Hanson Brothers are still fighting, the team is still losing, and captain Sean Linden is angered to learn they've been newly sold to a conglomerate with very particular plans. They leave Pennsylvania behind for the less populated landscape of Nebraska and find higher pay in the process. The only catch? They're set to play in scripted games "written" to accentuate the entertainment value of a Harlem Globetrotters-like experience on the ice.

Oh, and they're saddled with a female coach. Say what?! The guys react as you'd expect, but when he's offered an out if he gets the others onboard Sean rolls over. Will he find his integrity before the season ends They will not. Slap Shot is an acknowledged classic of sports cinema — of the R-rated variety along the lines of The Longest Yard and Major League — and for all of its beautifully crafted and delivered crass humor it might surprise you to learn it was written by Nancy Dowd.

The onscreen talent is equally strong starting with its lead star, Paul Newman. He's always been an actor who embraces the earthiness of his characters, but his performance here is just constantly entertaining as he lets loose with colorful language and wildly inappropriate behaviors.

Emmet Walsh. Can you officially measure the drop in quality from a Paul Newman to a Stephen Baldwin? Doubtful, but I feel confident guesstimating the drop down to Breaking the Ice as a very, very big fall. Callum Keith Rennie is probably the highlight, and both David Hemmings and Gary Busey have small roles with the former only shot in shadows for some reason.

The drop's even bigger to The Junior League as the only truly familiar face outside of the returning Hanson Brothers is a cameo by Leslie Nielsen.

The behind the scenes talents on both films are even less notable with their highs including 2nd Unit Director work on Mystery, Alask a and Battlefield Earth.