The next segment of the movie begins in a fascinating fashion with Herb staring at a bulletin board with his players’ names and faces written on index cards. I guess he’s making the final decisions about who is going to Lake Placid and who is going home, but it is also possible that he is just being an evil genius like the Grinch:
Literally a second later (because this movie was written by someone with severe attention issues, obviously) the scene shifts to a good luck and farewell party for our Olympic hockey players, as we see a banner wishing them the best in Lake Placid getting strung up on a wall. There is some miscellaneous chatter and laughter before OC knocks on the door to make his grand entrance.
OC hobbles in on crutches, and it’s kind of weird since we didn’t get to see the Madison Square Garden game where he got injured, but I suppose that spares us the agony of seeing these actors attempt to play hockey, so I won’t even complain about that. Instead, I’ll just comment on how it deviates from the timeline in a non-judgmental way, since this blog is a safe space for everyone, even incompetent directors.
Cox, who opened the door to admit OC, demands in the timelessly sympathetic manner of hockey players everywhere, “What happened?” In case, you’re wondering people in the hockey world aren’t traditionally very understanding about injuries, probably because hockey is the only pro sport where the team is literally down a man and can’t bring in a replacement if someone leaves mid-game owing to an injury. Basically, in hockey, it’s your fault you got hurt, and you’re probably exaggerating your injury like the total diver and wimp you are, so buck up and play, partner, unless you’re in a coma or something. If you doubt me on this and think I’m just making this stuff up to meet a word count, you can read about it in Ken Dryden’s consensus best hockey book ever entitled the Game, which is highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand how crazy goaltenders are and what it was like to be part of the Montreal Canadiens’ dynasty in the ‘70s.
OC says something sarcastic about how he fell down in the bathtub, and Dave Christian comes over not so much to help OC into a chair but to pepper him with questions about when he will return in the customary method of shaming the walking wounded back into playing on one leg if necessary. Once the besieged OC explains that he doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to play and Doc apparently doesn’t know about his injury, he settles into a chair with no thanks to the socially-impaired Dave.
Eventually, some members of the team overcome their years of hockey training in callous indifference to injuries, as they finally, in their words, realize, “Jack is hurt!” Someone also shouts out the bright idea of getting something for Jack’s foot. Ken Morrow grabs a seat to prop up OC’s leg, but Dictator Dave waves him off, ruling that “a pillow is good.” Of course it is; anything more than a pillow might make OC soft like a European or something.
OC says that a pillow is fine, but shows the slippery slope of an injury leading to softness by making the unreasonable request for another one.
Dave hands the crutches over to Ken Morrow and then asks if OC would like a drink. Patting his stomach, OC responds that he’d like a drink.
While everyone is finally attending to OC, Herb is back in his office, agonizing over what we can only presume are the final cuts. If that’s the case, I give everybody reading this blog fair warning that:
As I’m gathering up my pillows and Puffs, Herb removes some more index cards from his board and takes a sip of coffee. At least I assume its coffee. It could be something stronger, since Herb might be feeling:
Since our ADD director can’t focus on any scene for more than two seconds, we’re back at the party, where Jim and Silky are arriving in all their splendor. This is turning into quite the powwow.
Proving he may be the only guy on the team with a normal range of emotions, Jim comes over to ask OC how he is doing. Meanwhile, Ken Morrow is over at the drinks table, taking a sip of the cocktail that he spits back out like a total backwoods buffoon.
“Hey, Cox, what is this stuff, huh?” Ken demands. “Super or unleaded?”
“Cranberry juice and beer,” answers Cox as if this were a completely normal mix. Not a single hockey player has ever received any socialization whatsoever in this movie. Then Cox puts on this frankly psychopathic smile and adds, “Great color, huh?”
At this rate, next thing we know one of these guys will be drinking bourbon from a stranger’s shoe on a dare. Please be prepared to cover your eyes at a moment’s notice if you’re sensitive to reading about such inebriated exploits.
Putting down the punch with an eye roll, Ken remarks facetiously, “Terrific.”
Back in his den of doom, Herb is tinkering with the roster, and I hope I still have time to get ready for the final cuts, because:
The phone rings, and Herb barks into the receiver, “Yeah?” Gosh, Herb, you are so impolite. Didn’t anyone teach you how to answer a phone properly? Obviously not, because that’s not how you do it.
Moving along with another of the movie’s one-sided phone conversations that serve as info dumps and plot devices, Herb says, “Oh, hello, Keminsky…Yeah, yeah, I’m down to the final twenty…In the end, it wasn’t much choice who to cut…You’re right. The Russians are the last game we play before Lake Placid, so I might as well go along with my final choices…Yeah, bye.”
Okay, this phone conversation confirms that Herb is indeed making his final roster cuts. More importantly, though, it tells us that this party with a hurt OC takes place before the Madison Square Garden game against the Red Army team. That means this movie has OC getting injured at some other time. Weird. Maybe he got into a bar fight or something. This film drives me a bit crazy. Every time I give the director and script writer some credit for logic, the whole movie nose-dives gleefully back into lunacy. Ick. Perhaps everybody was intoxicated from cranberry juice and beer cocktails when working on this project. That’s about the only sane explanation for all these nonsensical plot decisions.
Herb hangs up on Keminsky and glances at the bulletin board one final time before the scene shifts back to the raging party with the beer and cranberry juice punch, where Rizzo has just entered to exuberant greetings from his celebrating teammates.
As Rizzo shuts the door, OC calls for him to come over to the chair. Holding his arm out like Adam reaching for God on the Sistine Chapel, OC implores, “Come here! Come here! Quick, Rizzie! Give me your hand!”
When Rizzo hurries over because the poor dude sounds like he is a dying man in need of a priest, OC snatches his hand and places it on his forehead. Rising after a second, he proclaims with exaggerated excitement, “It’s working. Oh, I can walk. I can walk.” Everyone realizes that they’re a victim of a classic OC prank or else Rizzo is Jesus Cat in disguise:
In all seriousness, we obviously learn here that OC wasn’t injured and just pretending to be to scare the daylights out of his teammates. While it’s nice to see OC’s playfully malicious personality on display in this film (especially since OC’s personality is one of the few things this movie gets right, so the director and script writers should play it to the hilt), I find this decision to have OC pretend to be hurt kind of ill-advised. It’s clumsy foreshadowing that actually removes some of the drama from the impending and real injury that OC is going to suffer at Madison Square Garden and makes it almost seem like poetic justice that OC got really hurt just to learn that injuries aren’t joking matters.
To explore what I mean and have an excuse to mention (because any blog post is ten times better with them) Steve Yzerman (who has only gotten more handsome with age, especially when he gives one of his rare grins that show off his crow’s feet) and Steven Stamkos (who is probably the happiest person ever to play pro hockey), let’s use a modern comparison from Team Canada 2014. Putting on our imagination hats instead of our thinking caps, let’s pretend that someone was going to do a movie on Team Canada’s path to gold in Sochi, and that brain trust decided to have Stamkos hobble, clutching his leg, into Yzerman’s office in Tampa sometime in late October, so we can have the following dramatic exchange:
Stamkos: Ouch, my leg! I’ve never been in pain like this before, not even when I took that slapshot to the face during that playoff series against Boston.
Yzerman: What did you do to yourself?
Stamkos: I didn’t do it! The goalpost I crashed into did. No need to sound so accusing.
Yzerman: You crashed into a goalpost? How stupid are you? They don’t move, you know.
Stamkos: Not true. The goalpost moved, but just not as much as my leg did. My leg got all twisted like Gumby’s. It was kind of gross to watch.
Yzerman: Well, back when I played, the goalposts didn’t move around so much, so we knew better than to collide with them like bumper cars.
Stamkos: Back when you played, some guys didn’t wear helmets.
Yzerman: Only at the dawn of my storied NHL career. Anyway, how long will it take your leg to heal?
Stamkos: I don’t know. Probably a couple of months or a full season. I haven’t spoken to the doctors yet.
Yzerman: Why the heck not? Why didn’t you go to the trained medical professionals first instead of to me?
Stamkos: Because they would have seen instantly that I was pulling their legs, and that wouldn’t be a very funny prank.
Yzerman: I can’t believe that you’re getting an average annual salary of 7.5 million dollars, and you think this is an appropriate use of your time. Why don’t you get lost and do something useful like practicing your face-offs? Your face-off percentage stats are just ghastly, but you still insist on calling yourself a center.
Then, in early November, this happens in Boston Garden:
As an audience, of course, we’d feel sorry that Steven Stamkos, one of the few Canadians in the NHL who shows an actual personality beyond clichés in interviews on a regular basis, went down with a freak accident to his tibia during an Olympic year, but we’d also wonder why the directors took away some of the drama with such dumb foreshadowing and why they made Stamkos seem like such a jerk with a cavalier attitude to injuries. Fortunately, in the real world, this didn’t happen, so we could all feel weepy when Stamkos couldn’t go to the Olympics and babble on about how nobody had ever wished anything bad on Stamkos since he’s a guy everyone in the hockey world loves. Literally, I’m not exaggerating when I say everyone loves the dude, because Chara, the Big Bad Wolf defenseman, actually sent him a text wishing him well after his tibia surgery, and Claude Julien came by to visit him in the hospital (probably to assure him that if he signed with the Bruins as an unrestricted free agent, the offending goalpost could be removed from the Garden).
Anyhow, now that I’ve used a contemporary comparison to demonstrate how awful the scriptwriting and directing in this film is when it comes to robbing emotions from what should be key dramatic points of the movie, I apologize for dragging the two Stevens from Tampa into this mess, but I’m confident with sufficient therapy, they should make a full recovery and go back to being their well-adjusted selves, so moving along with the film, OC dances around, proclaiming how healed he is. Then the phone rings, and it’s about as menacing as that scene from Killer in the House:
Rizzo picks up the phone and answers somewhat correctly by saying, “Hello.” The partiers continue to make a ton of noise around him, so he covers the mouthpiece and asks, “Would you guys keep it down?”
When nobody responds to this request and everyone keeps talking at the top of their voices, Rizzo hollers, “Will everybody shut up please? It’s Herb.” Maybe somebody should teach Rizzo that adding “please” doesn’t make “shut up” polite any more than prefacing a statement that someone looks like a killer whale with “no offense” makes it sensitive.
Since the mention of Herb is enough to silence everybody, Rizzo talks into the mouthpiece again, saying, “Yeah, Herb. Uh, yeah, yeah, they are. Just a minute.” Someone should explain to these scriptwriters that not every piece of dialogue has to include one or two “yeah.” It’s getting grating to hear, honestly.
Rizzo calls over his shoulder, “Cox! It’s for you.”
Cox wends his way over to the phone, which he takes from Rizzo, saying in a shaky voice, “Hi…I think I know what it’s about, Herb. There’s no need to come to your office…I understand…Yeah…Thanks for everything…Yep…Good luck to you, too…I mean it; you’re gonna win the gold, Herb…Sure, hang on.”
That was probably one of the most awkward phone conversations in Olympic hockey history right up there with that time Steve Yzerman had to call Marty St. Louis to warn him that he didn’t make the 2014 Team Canada roster, and Marty began a tantrum that lasted months by demanding a trade. Seriously, Marty St. Louis is the whiniest Olympian in hockey history, because he is a brat who continues to cry incessantly even when he gets whatever he wants, and I spent the whole Olympics hoping Babcock would punch him in the face and exclaim, “Sorry. Didn’t see you there, because you’re just so small.”
Oh, look, I’m digressing again. What’s really important here is that Ralph Cox, an amateur athlete who will never have the accolades that Marty St. Louis does, handled the cut with maturity and was even able to wish Herb well even though he had to be in a ton of emotional pain. Way to go, Cox! You’re a winner who deserves a round of tearful applause, so here you go, pal:
Cox passes the phone to Hughes, who takes it and says, “Yeah, Herb…Yeah, I’ll be right over.” Then Hughes hangs up the phone, and my heart is all torn up, so:
All the boys look like kicked puppies, so I’m going to end this post here, so I can heal my bruised heart before moving onto the next section.
glimpsesfromanivorytower 