Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Nobody is Prepared for This

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.

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Looking for Lake Placid

After bidding a sad adieu to Les Auge (whose humorous presence will be missed in this film), the action moves to the team bus traveling down a mostly deserted, dark highway at night. The camera pans in on Coach Patrick and Herb snoozing in the front row, and it’s good to see Herb doing something as normal and non-confrontational as sleeping. Perhaps it will lower his blood pressure.

As the bus moves along, Pav’s guitar strums the tune to Simon and Garfunkel’s classic tune about the New Jersey turnpike and its endless bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, and he sings us “America” in a melancholic voice:

Once Pav finishes his singing, Jim notes to Rizzo, who is sitting next to him, “I’m just looking for one small town in America, Lake Placid.” That must have been harder to do before the days of Google Maps, so that’s quite a quest.

Rizzo responds playfully, “Lake Placid? I’ve never heard of it. Don’t worry, Jimmy. If it’s got less than ten thousand people, Brooks has got it on the schedule.”

The guy behind Jim whose face I can’t read well in the dark bus (so I don’t know who he is, basically), comments, “I personally don’t think the place exists. Probably just Brooks’ way of getting a hockey team together.” I think he should adjust his tin foil hat because the conspiracy theory reception isn’t too good, but he’d probably just assure me:

The person behind Rizzo puts in, “You know what I think? We all died and went to hockey players’ hell.” Nah, hockey players’ hell wasn’t invented until John Tortorella (who really should have an award for the biggest coaching meltdown given in his honor, or, really, disgrace each year) began his NHL coaching career. For proof of what I mean, check out this charming video of Tortorella roasting his players alive:

Remember that’s what Tortorella does in front of rolling cameras. He’s probably even more of a Grade A jerk in private, but moving along from Tortorella’s Broadway productions because he’s now been fired by two different NHL franchises in two consecutive seasons which makes him not particularly relevant to the hockey world anymore (thank you, hockey gods), let’s get back to our 1980 adventure.

Some teammate from the front of the bus, shouts over his shoulder, “Hey, will you guys shut up? Some civilized people up front want to get some sleep.” Come on, man. A team bus is meant to be loud, so that tells the audience:

At this point, Jim decides to open up and start relating his whole life story to Pav, saying, “You know, when I was a kid, I never slept. Not a lot. Used to get up at four o’clock in the morning to play hockey. My mother would be in the kitchen fixing breakfast. She was healthy then. Anyway, I used to play with the older guys on the pond. My kid brother plays there now. The older guys had cars, so I’d slip downstairs and stay near the heater to keep warm and close to the door so I could hear the horn of the car. It really felt good being the youngest allowed to play.” This is cute, because I know that Jim liked to slip his mother notes in the morning and stuff.

Pav points out, “Except they made you play in net.” Ha. That’s funny because my brother is a goalie, but I’ve always said that the only reason he became one was for the masks. Goalies get to customize their masks, which I suspect is one of those bones the hockey community threw them because otherwise no one would be willing to take that awful job. (If you’re the goalie, you can make thirty saves and still get booed for the one you miss, and also you wear so much protective equipment that if you want to hug a teammate you risk suffocating him; goalie fights are like two men attempting to dance with beach balls glued all over their bodies). Basically, the thing is, if you weren’t a very odd person before you became a goalie, you would be after a few seasons of it, and it shows. Some of those goalie masks look like creations serial killers would make out of their victims (looking at you, Carey Price). Some look like the ultimate foray into geekdom (Kari Lehtonen! Peter Budaj!). I love that every goalie’s psyche is right out there on display. (And, in the case of the one that looks like brains: way to take that literally.) Gives you something to analyze during breaks in the action.

“Nah,” Jim answers. “That was just when I was in high school. They supplied the goalie’s equipment. Besides, my mother figured that goal was the safest place.” That’s odd. I thought Jimmy was pretty much always a goaltender even when he played pond hockey as a kid, because I remember him saying somewhere that he wanted to play but didn’t understand all the rules, so being a goalie was simple since all he had to do was keep the puck out of the net. I’m going to trust my memory more than this film. In short, movie:

Speaking of playing with older guys, Bah remarks, “When I was a freshman I played for Duluth against the ’76 squad. Man, I thought those guys were ten feet tall.”

“Hey, Bah,” Buzz teases, “tell them how you scored the winning goal against us in overtime.” That sounds like a cool moment. Was it as awesome as TJ Oshie’s shootout goal against Russia?

“Yeah, hare-brain,” retorts Bah, “for the four-hundred and seventy-fifth time.” Everyone laughs uproariously, as Bah continues, “Migraine headache number two.”

“What’s number one?” shouts somebody from the front of the bus (and the poor lighting in this scene is driving me nuts, because it makes it even harder to identify characters who all look the same).

Being all sociable for once, Jimmy jokes, “ ‘Where’s Brooks? O’Callahan’s looking for him.’” That’s actually pretty funny, because it gives me a mental image of OC going after Herb like Roy going after Perry in this hilarious gif:

Now I just wish the movie would show Herb and O’Callahan at each other’s throats. That would be better than ten million renditions of Herb giving Rizzo and Jimmy a hard time. Oh, well, we can’t have everything we want in life, so moving along with the film, Rizzo decides to end the fun by warning, “Hey, you guys better take it easy. He’ll hear you. Let’s get some sleep.” Then Rizzo curls up in his chair like a total baby, and the bus rolls along.

Not actually going to sleep, Rizzo tells Jimmy in a quiet voice, “Hey, Jimmy. All that stuff is behind you now. Got to think to the future.” Okay, Rizzo, I realize you were just trying to be sympathetic there, but you sound like a total moron, since that’s not how the stages of grief work. The stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and freaking denial and anger again. Okay, I invented the last bit to make a point, but hear me out. Grief is a process. You don’t get over losing your mother the same way you move beyond losing a sock (never a whole pair, of course) in the washing machine unless you are a sociopath.

“Future?” Jim asks. “Actually, I was thinking about my ma. I guess there’s a connection somewhere.” Of course there is. The connection is in Lake Placid, the place where we’re all looking for…

 

Breaking down a Miracle Movie: Captain and Cut

As those saints among you who have been loyally following my blog now, we last left off with Herb essentially declaring that he would go down with the sinking Olympic team ship. Since that’s been decided, we, of course, need to appoint a captain to steer this sinking ship into an iceberg and to not abandon ship when it does, so stay tuned to see who is the recipient of this honor.

To begin this exciting part of the movie, the boys are in their locker room, and Dave Christian is distributing pieces of paper to everyone so that the team can elect their Olympic captain. Not at all concerned with voter anonymity, the camera zooms in on Bill Baker’s paper, so we can read Rizzo’s name on it.

When questioned about his vote by a peeping teammate (whose face I can’t recognize), Bill explains that a reliable source told him that Herb hates Rizzo the most. The audience can only infer that Bill is apparently so juvenile he believes that the player whom the coach despises the most should automatically be the captain just because it will infuriate the coach the most, which is about as good an argument for Communism as any, since regular people are obviously mentally unequipped to make prudent decisions when determining their own leaders. Also, the audience is free to suspect that Herb (who actually wanted Rizzo to be captain) planted that source just to manipulate Bill’s brain. Careful, Bill, because:

Being all skeptical, Rob asks, “More than O’Callahan?” Now in real life, this line would make sense, because Herb liked to rip into Jack O’Callahan just to make a point to the entire team, rendering it conceivable that the team as a whole might conclude that Herb wasn’t particularly fond of OC, and, by all accounts, Jack and Robbie enjoyed taunting one another, but in the movie world this line is just incongruous with what’s actually been shown thus far.

As of yet, Herb has only directed specific tirades to Rizzo and Jim Craig, as the script writers went to great pains to establish in the previous two sections, so if teammates were to conclude that Herb had any extreme rancor toward certain players, based on what the movie has shown, they would have to believe that Herb hated Rizzo or Jimmy the most. If the movie wants us to believe that Herb seems to hate OC, show him ripping into OC the way he does Rizzo or Jimmy. Don’t just have this awkwardly thrown in line of dialogue about it when the comment is at total odds with everything the dialogue and action has demonstrated in the last couple of scenes. I want to like this line since it is spoken by Robbie about OC, but because of how the rest of the script leading up to it is written, I instead have to ask the script writers for the umpteenth time:

The camera pans across the room to focus on Pav just in time for the audience to hear him ask Buzz, who is sitting next to him on the bench, whether Buzz wants his vote. Buzz chuckles and answers, “Hey, look, I can’t tell you how to vote, but I’m voting for Rizzie.” This is also a sort of weird reply, since I doubt players would have been allowed to vote for themselves, as that would result in a fiasco where everybody voted for himself and there would still be no captain. However, it does establish that people are voting for Rizzo as more than just a joke, which I guess is respectful of his leadership abilities at least. I’m glad that it was only some of the team that apparently voted for Rizzo for the lolz of seeing him clash with Herb. That makes this whole captaincy thing feel much more official.

Moving across the locker room again, Jim is telling the guy sitting next to him to give him a look at his ballot. This dialogue sounds like we’re in a third grade classroom voting for class president, honestly. In keeping with this childish vein, the dude next to Jim retorts, “Hey, I don’t see you flashing your ballot around.”

Smiling slightly, Jim persists, “Come on.” Surrendering, the guy opens the ballot, and Jim reads Rizzo’s name in an incredulous tone. Then when the guy next to him demands to see his ballot, Jim reveals with a grin that he voted for Rizzo as well. What a clever and unpredictable joke brought to us courtesy of the scriptwriters. Jeez, no wonder USA Hockey appoints captains and associate captains for Olympic teams now rather than letting players vote. It spares us scenes like this imagined satirical one from the 2014 squad:

Dan Bylsma: Welcome to Sochi, gentlemen. USA Hockey asks me to remind you all not to flush the toilet paper down the toilets, as it might make the pipes explode, and to reiterate that the yellow stuff coming out of the sinks isn’t Gatorade, so drink the Dasani we’ve provided instead of anything spewing out of the faucet. We don’t want any illnesses because then I might have to remove Faulk from the storage closet I’ve locked him in for the duration of the tournament. Now, we’ve got to elect ourselves a captain who, of course, will be better than whiny old Sidney Crosby, so please write somebody’s name who isn’t your own on the paper I’ve just passed out.

Zach Parise (in an undertone to Ryan Suter): I’m voting for you, buddy, because we’re bros from our days with the National Development Team.

Ryan Suter: Me too. Well, I’m not voting for me. I’m voting for you, but, other than that, we’re twins.

Ryan McDonagh to Derek Stepan: Hey, Step, who’s got your vote?

Derek Stepan: Probably Marty St. Louis. You can’t go too wrong with a veteran player like him, right?

Ryan McDonagh: Isn’t he on the Canadian team?

Derek Stepan: Duh. Do you even read the news, Mac Truck? It was this huge scandal when Yzerman left him off the Canadian roster for the second time in eight years, and he wasn’t appeased by being the injury replacement for Stamkos, so he’s been demanding a trade to the Rangers, which is why he’s a candidate for the Rangers’ captaincy once Callahan’s been traded for trying to earn more money than he’s worth.

Ryan Callahan: What’s this about earning more money than I’m worth? Do we get paid for this Olympic gig?

Zach Parise: Only if we get sponsors like Chobani. Speaking of Chobani, can you believe it isn’t served in the Olympic dining halls? How am I going to get my calcium if not from a morning dose of my favorite brand of Greek yogurt? Oh, and I’m a totally uninspired hockey player unless I get my daily value of calcium, so this is a serious concern.

Ryan McDonagh to Derek Stepan: I wasn’t talking about the Rangers. I was talking about the US Olympic team we’re on right now.

Derek Stepan: Oh, yeah. My bad. I guess I’ll vote for you since we played college together at the University of Wisconsin and everything.

Ryan McDonagh: I’ll return the favor by voting for you. Badgers forever!

Cam Fowler: Coach, am I allowed to vote for Captain Crunch? Sugary cereals are my favorite.

Dan Bylsma: Um, out of curiosity, Cam, how old are you, anyway?

Cam Fowler: Twenty-two, which means I’m the perfect age for a second childhood that I should enjoy because the next thing I have to look forward to is a midlife crisis that probably won’t happen until I’m forty and retired from pro hockey.

Dan Bylsma (massaging his temples): No, you can’t vote for Captain Crunch because he’s not on this team.

Cam Fowler (pouting): You didn’t say we had to vote for someone on the team. You just said that we couldn’t vote for ourselves. It’s not fair to change the rules midway through an election even if we are in Russia.

Dan Bylsma: Fine. You can vote for Captain Crunch, but nobody else will, so it doesn’t even matter.

Patrick Kane: You know who else no one will vote for because he doesn’t matter? Jonathan Toews. He’s the worst captain ever, and nobody likes him. I hope the media reports that I said that, because that will really steam him, and an angry Toews is an entertaining, for-once-not-boring Toews.

Dustin Brown: Can I knock out Toews’ kneecaps? That would be really entertaining.

Ryan McDonagh: Oh, shut up. Everyone respects Toews, and nobody respects you. I’d call you a cheapshot artist but that’s more of a compliment than you deserve, so I’ll just say you’re a dirty hockey player, and I’m having a mounting urge to crosscheck you.

Dan Bylsma: Knock it off, you two. We’re all on the same team here. Save it for the Stanley Cup Finals.

Ryan McDonagh: Does that mean that Pittsburg is planning another embarrassing playoff exit to a lower seed?

Dan Bylsma: We don’t even need to plan them. Embarrassing playoff exits just happen to Penguins naturally.

Justin Faulk (entering from the storage closet): Can I vote for team captain?

Dan Bylsma: God, Justin, don’t startle me like that! My ticker can’t handle it. Anyway, what are you doing out of that closet?

Justin Faulk: I was kicked out by the janitors. They want to convert it to a bathroom by installing five toilets and no partitions.

Dan Bylsma: That’s disgusting. Everyone, make a mental note not to use that room. Well, Justin, you can’t vote, since you aren’t really on the team in my opinion, but you can collect the ballots. (Once the ballots have been assembled.) Um, T.J., not to sound accusatory, but what demon possessed you to write your name ten times?

T.J. Oshie: Sorry, Coach. Just practicing my autograph.

Dan Bylsma: Very smart, since that’s the only form of writing hockey players need to know to make it big in the NHL. Don’t worry. We’ll just use your ballot as the line-up for when we get into a shootout with Russia or something.

T.J. Oshie: Good joke, but I’m not dumb enough to fall for it, because you can’t use the same person over and over in a shootout.

Dan Bylsma: Not in the NHL, but in international hockey you can, and the Olympics is international hockey. I can use you ten times in a row in a shootout if I want to…

T.J. Oshie: Okay, now you’re taking this joke a little too far.

Dan Bylsma: You say that now, but wait until you see how much farther I can carry it on the largest stage.

So, anyway, thank God we were spared the sight of that on the NHL network, but we’ll have to go back to the Miracle on Ice film now that bit of comedy has passed, so we’re returning to the locker room, where Jim is asking Rizzo who he voted for captain. In response, Rizzo lifts his paper to show Buzz Schneider’s name. Perhaps Rizzo and Buzz are developing a bromance. I hope that Les Auge doesn’t get too jealous, since that would just be uncomfortable and sad.

Upon reading Buzz’s name, Jim wrinkles his nose and rolls his eyes. I guess he expected Rizzo to be a big enough egotist to vote for himself or something.

The scene shifts to Rizzo sitting on a sofa, talking into a phone, saying in his half of the conversation, “Kevin! Yeah, it’s me—Mike. I’m all right. How are you doing? Good. Look, is my dad there? Oh, no, no, that’s okay. Uh, listen. When he comes in, just tell him I was elected captain. Yeah. No, that doesn’t mean Brooks still can’t cut me. Look, all right, Kevin, do me another favor. Call Ma and tell her and the rest of the family, will you? And tell her to let Donna know, too. She wasn’t home, either. Yeah, that’s very funny. Okay. Good to talk to you. All right.” After that, he hangs up the phone without saying good-bye, because he is a male, after all, and everyone knows that all men are socially incompetent on the telephone. It’s like a law of nature, and I’m not sexist; I’m right.

This movie has an obsession with revealing important tidbits through one-sided phone conversations, so to outline the salient points viewers are supposed to glean from this conversation, we learn the following from this telephone exchange: Rizzo has been elected captain of the Olympic team, Herb can still cut him so that tension remains, and Donna is still an essentially useless character for Rizzo to have a romance with that the film insists on inserting in unnecessary ways, since if she wasn’t home, it’s not critical to reference her.

Getting past my annoyance with the waste of film time that Donna represents, it’s time for the US Olympic team to play an exhibition game against the Adirondack Red Wings, which, as the name implies, is the minor league affiliate of the Detroit Red Wings. As a franchise, the Red Wings are, of course, renowned for their excellent drafting, but none of that vaunted prowess is on display in this movie, since all the Adirondack Red Wings play hockey as if they have never picked up a stick or tied skates before. On the plus side, the Detroit Red Wings are famous for being patient with their prospects, which is fortunate since these minor leaguers seem likely to make an NHL impact around Armageddon.

The announcer talks about how the game is still scoreless between the Adirondack Red Wings and the US Olympic team, and how Les Auge is drifting back in his own zone to collect the puck, moving at a speed slower than paint dries, because everyone in this movie skates like they are cutting through molasses rather than ice. Needless to say, I’m doing this as I watch:

Auditioning for the role of Captain Obvious, the announcer remarks on how the Olympians aren’t looking sharp in the game as they dump the puck into the Adirondack end of the rink, where the Adirondack defense manages to collect the puck in the clumsiest possible way and pass it to their center, but Les Auge intercepts the puck and gives it to Neal Broten.

On the bench, Herb yells at his team, “Watch the other side!” That seems a rather ambitious request to make of the Olympians. Based on the way the actors play them, it would be too much to ask for them to skate and locate the puck at the same time, nonetheless keep track of the opposition while performing the aforesaid tasks.

The announcer explains for the slower members of the audience that Herb isn’t at all happy with his squad’s performance as the Adirondack forwards advance with the puck again, and Les Auge, in his bid for MVP, manages to look like a flat-footed moose hit by a tranquilizer gun when he smashes into the boards and fails to hamper the opposing team’s advance.

Given front row access to the US Olympic team’s net, the Adirondack forward pots a goal, and Les Auge should be proud, since he just achieved the feat of making the terrible skating of the Adirondack forward seem magnificent, but then again, everyone on the ice is so bad at skating that they make Corey Perry (he who spends half of every NHL game toppling into the other team’s goalie and falling to his knees in odd poses) look like Scott Niedermayer (who flew across the ice like Jesus walked on water). For those of you who benefit from visual aids, that means this goal:

Looks like this one:

That’s saying something about how awful the caliber of competition in this game is, since I’ve always insisted that:

Regretfully putting aside the topic of how smooth Niedermayer’s skating was and how criminally underrated he sometimes is by people who cannot appreciate gifts from the hockey gods, we’ll resume our analysis of the game between the US Olympic team and the Adirondack Red Wings. Anyway, the Adirondack forward celebrates as if he just netted the Stanley Cup winner, and Steve Guttenberg, who was once again caught at the totally wrong goalpost, is probably thinking:

Back on the bench, Herb barks at Pav to get his line out there, instructing them to skate, play their game, and get back the point by scoring.

Seriously, based on the skill level of these actors, that’s akin to ordering a blind man to paint a landscape or a deaf man to compose a concerto mimicking the sounds of chirping birds.

Les Auge, who is still on the ice in a shift that must have lasted three minutes when the average shift should be about thirty to ninety seconds, is whistled for tripping and sent to the penalty box for two minutes.

At the bench, Herb probably wants to do this:

Since he’s a professional, though, he settles for snapping, “What did I say to Les Auge? Skate! Forget surgery with your stick! Please.” Just because Herb is showing wonderful signs of growth in the manners department by remembering to say please, his team should give him positive reinforcement by offering the thumbs-up and chanting as one:

The announcer comments about how the Red Wings are on the attack, which isn’t exactly surprising, as they are on the power play, and that’s what they should be doing, but they don’t actually manage to score with the man advantage, because the final buzzer sounds with the tally 1-0 in favor of the Adirondack Red Wings. Still, I imagine the Adirondack coaches will be drawing diagrams on their blackboards to illustrate:

In the locker room after the game, Les Auge is cupping his chin in despair, and I think he’s not the only one doing so. I bet the coaching staff of both teams are considering the benefits of arson in blowing up their teams or at least hosting a gigantic fire sale. In fact, after this game, the conversation among the Red Wing executives as overheard by a fly on the wall probably sounded something like this:

First Red Wing Big Wig: So, do you want the good news or the bad news first?

Second Red Wing Big Shot: Give me the good news first. I’m still finishing my caviar and champagne, so I don’t want to throw up.

First Red Wing Big Wig: The good news is that our minor leaguers won against the US Olympians.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: I’m done, and what could possibly be bad when we won?

First Red Wing Big Wig: Our prospect team is in shambles. Gordie Howe would weep if he saw it, and you know how tough he is.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: We can’t go peeing on Gordie’s Hall of Fame legacy. What are we going to do to bring some respectability back to our franchise after tonight’s shameful victory?

First Red Wing Big Wig: I was thinking we should tank for draft picks so we can acquire some actual prospects, because that Stevie Yzerman kid looks vaguely promising. Maybe he can lead us through the desert of playoff failure to the oasis of drinking from the Stanley Cup.

Second Red Wing Big Shot: Sure, and while we’re dreaming, why don’t we also bring in Scotty Bowman and about five Red Army players to help us win the greatest trophy in all sports?

While the Red Wings were hatching their top-secret plan for bringing the Stanley Cup back to Detroit around 1997 (since Detroit always takes the long view), Herb was probably in the hallway calling Murray Williamson, who coached many of the National teams Herb played on and also coached the 1972 Olympic squad that Herb wasn’t on which brought back the silver medal. Bugging their connection, we’d probably hear something like this:

Herb: Murray? Is that you?

Murray: If I say it isn’t, will you hang up and stop bothering me?

Herb: That’s like the king of all stupid questions. When have I ever stopped bothering anyone?

Murray: When you’ve gotten something that you wanted. As soon as you get whatever you’re demanding, you stop bothering your victim.

Herb: Clever of you to notice. You’ll be overjoyed to hear that it’s you I want something from this time around.

Murray: Of course you do. Former players never contact old coaches unless they want something. What do you want from me? A glowing letter of recommendation for a job application?

Herb: Don’t be dumb. I’ve already got a job coaching the ’80 Olympic team. That’s what I’m calling about. I want you to send me a list of all the players from the ’72 squad that have retained their amateur status, because after tonight’s slaughter by the Adirondack Red Wings, my team needs a massive infusion of new blood if you catch my drift.

Murray: Wake up and smell the coffee, Herb. Everyone on that team is either retired from hockey or playing professionally. You’re going to have to forge your own Olympic destiny with your own college boy brats.

Herb: Didn’t you have a sixteen-year-old on your team? Isn’t he still eligible?

Murray: The sixteen-year-old was Mark Howe, and he’s playing in the NHL as a defenseman, telling me that he’s going to be a Hall of Famer and that I played him in the wrong position as a forward. The cheek of some people. If I had a penny for every time I heard something like that from a player, I’d have a mansion on Maui.

Herb: The measurement of how much I don’t care is in the purely theoretical number range, Murray. If you can’t help me, I’m going to hang up now, because I’ve got players to bully in the locker room.

Entering the Olympic team’s locker room, Herb harangues his team: “You guys are playing worse and worse every day. In fact, right now you’re playing as though it’s the middle of next month.”

It’s a slightly modified Brooksism. Excellent. Moving on with his lecture, Herb marches up to Jim and jabs a finger at his goalie’s chest, declaring, “Craig, don’t think your place is guaranteed on this Olympic squad.”

Increasing his volume as he yells at the only other player that he talks to on a routine basis, Herb growls, “Rizzie, skate harder! Oh, and another thing, Mike, control your linemates’ play, because if you can’t, let me know right now before we make the final cuts.” While it’s neat to see a winger rather than a center expected to lead a line for once, everything else about this piece of dialogue makes me cringe, because how does nobody else on the team notice that Herb only talks to Jim and Rizzo, which probably means he’s making a scapegoat of them at least half the time.

Pacing around the locker room, Herb continues, “All right, Patrick will give you travel details, and, Lester, see me after you get dressed.” Eek. Herb is actually addressing someone besides Jim or Rizzo. I have a bad feeling about this…

Seriously, this means that Les Auge is about to get the ax, and I’m devastated because his bromance with Rizzo was sweet (better than the actual romance between Donna and Rizzo, to be honest) and he was one of my favorite characters. What a pity. I’m going to need a moment to dry my eyes with a Kleenex, so:

Staring after Herb as he leaves, Les looks so much like a kicked puppy that my heart breaks into a million pieces. Then, he acts like a martyr, commenting to Mike that it’s going to be all right because it’s all for the best. I half expect him to expound upon how life is a box of chocolates:

Mercifully, we are spared seeing the actual cut (in a case where the script writers are content to do a bit of implication for once rather than a ton of hitting over the head with the obvious), and the scene shifts to Les returning to an emptied locker room in his suit. Realizing Rizzo is waiting for him on a bench, Les crosses the locker room and remarks, “Thanks for waiting.”

Standing up, Rizzo comments in a rather choked voice, “Hey, I, uh, I packed your stuff up for you.”

Gesturing at the bag, Les replies woodenly, “Yeah, thanks.”

“I’m real sorry, Les,” Rizzo adds.

Being all stoic, Les responds, “It was going to happen sooner or later. I meant what I said that night. You got to get it where you can find it, and if there’s nothing for me here, I’d rather find out now.”

Getting angry, Rizzo says, “Come on now, Les. Would you get off it? You’ve got a great future in this game. You’re a player.”

This is breaking my heart, because it turned out that Les Auge was basically a career minor leaguer who only played six NHL games, but at least that makes him more successful than Hugh Jessiman. Still, it’s hard for me to be comforted by even Hugh Jessiman bust jokes, since Les is great, and I want him to succeed in hockey. Les:

That denial is what is causing me so much angst, but Les is more of a realist than I am, because he observes, “But not in the ’80 Olympics. Win.”

With that last command, Les leaves the locker room and walks out onto the ice, where he fires a puck into the net and raises his stick in a lackluster gesture of jubilation. Les is very wise here, since in life you always have to look on the bright side.

On that bittersweet note, Les exits the rink and the film, so we’ll bid adieu to one another until it’s time for me to analyze the next installment.

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: The Stars versus the Olympians

After the confrontation in the creepy hallway, it’s time for the game between the North Stars and the US Olympians. The game coverage begins with an annoying announcer’s voice providing the commentary: “From the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, home of the Minnesota North Stars, it’s the North Stars of the National Hockey League against US Olympic team.” What a pompous guy, referring to the National Hockey League instead of just calling it the NHL like virtually everyone else on the planet. I already dislike this announcer even more than Pierre McGuire, which is saying something since the following meme depicts my relationship with Pierre McGuire’s NHL commentary quite succinctly:

Getting past my detest-at-first-hearing feelings for the commentator of this Stars and US Olympic team game, it’s time for us to listen in as the US team completes a warm-up skate. As they circle the arena, Buzz asks Les Auge, “Hey, how are you feeling?”

Shrugging repeatedly, Les Auge replies, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t feel ready, you know.” What a weird answer. If you don’t feel ready, then you know exactly how you feel, so don’t start off by saying that you don’t have a clue what emotions you are experiencing, because it makes you sound like this:

“Yeah, I do,” Rizzo answers, “but for me, it’s now or never, you know?” I feel like “you know” has been really overused in this conversation by now, you know? I think we should disembowel the scriptwriters, you know, for making us listen to this drivel, you know. You know, someone should have explained to them that an excessive amount of “you know” doesn’t add veracity to dialogue; what it contributes is aggravation that will heighten a lot of viewers’ blood pressure.

Shifting away from the warm-ups, the camera pans over the crowd, and then we are informed by the pompous announcer, “Ready for the opening faceoff now between Johnson and Bernard. ”

Bernard opens the game’s trash talk with this charming comment, “Keep your head up, Johnson. It’s gonna be a long night for everyone. Tonight you play hard ball.” I guess this rather lame attempt at an intimidation tactic is Bernard’s way of warning Mark that he’s supposedly going to spend the night celebrating like this if he wins a faceoff:

Mark wins the faceoff but he shouldn’t bother rejoicing, since, as soon as he passes the puck to Robbie, Robbie coughs up the puck almost immediately because maintaining puck possession or even going with a dump-and-chase style is so passé. Way to set a strong tone like a first line winger should, Robbie.

As the action lumbers along, it becomes increasingly clear that the actors who play the Olympians (and the North Stars) entire hockey experience is limited to once having participated in a round of Nok Hockey at the pool. None of these guys can skate or pass, nonetheless skate and pass at the same time, so watching this part of the movie is just brutal to anyone who has ever seen a hockey game or even just imagined what one might be like to witness. It’s only a short but excruciating time before the US Olympic team’s terrible technique results in a breakaway opportunity for the North Stars because nobody on the US squad can figure out how to give or receive a pass and certainly nobody thought to hang back on defense:

Steve Guttenberg, who is ridiculously uncoordinated in this segment of the film, reaches for the totally wrong part of the net in a sad stab at a glove save, and, of course, the North Stars score, leading me to believe that the block of wood in Nok Hockey is a better goaltender than Steve Guttenberg, so pick that slab of wood for your fantasy hockey team before Steve Guttenberg.

On the bench, Herb tries to steady the crew by shouting, “All right. Pavelich, Schneider, Harrington.” As the Coneheads climb over the bench for a line change, Herb is probably asking himself:

The commentator babbles on about how this game is, “A tough initiation for the US Olympic team after coming back from a ten game tour of Europe. That have to accustomize themselves to a physical, North American style.” That’s kind of an odd statement to make. The players on the US Olympic team would have been raised with the more physical North American style. Being that they aren’t goldfish, I think they’d be fine transitioning back to the North American style after only a few weeks of playing the European version because they have things called long term memory and muscle memory.

At this point, we have an awkward blend of actual footage of the North Stars and Olympic team game and shots of Karl Malden on the bench. It all just comes across as very clunky. The real footage destroys any suspension of disbelief that might still exist in the audience by reminding us that Karl Malden isn’t really Herb Brooks and the actors bumbling around on ice aren’t really the Miracle boys. What should have been done was either using all fake footage or relying entirely on the real footage of the game for this part of the movie, because this mixing-and-matching effect isn’t working.

This montage reaches a climax when Christian gets into a fight and then everyone else on the team piles into the fray in a bench-clearing brawl since if you can’t beat them on the scoreboard you might as well beat them with your fists. Apparently having sustained permanent brain damage from his stint in the NHL, Patrick asks what this is and is informed by Herb that it’s a “crowd pleaser.”

Then we’re back in the locker room, where Herb addresses his team, remarking, “Sometimes a good kick in the butt is good for a top athlete. It helps them grow, build a team. I can’t say that you played well out there tonight. The score could have been worse. It could have been worse than four goals to two, but you’ve got to give your all all the time. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And we’ve still got to get down to twenty players before we face the Russians, and they’re hungry but really hungry. I keep telling you over and over and over, if you want to do your best, depend on each other, all of you, especially Craig and Eruzione.”

In other words, Herb is asking his team (especially Craig and Eruzione, since that’s the movie’s new clever inside joke that makes me want to trample over plants):

“If you want to be your best,” Herb bellows, “then skate together as a team and not for yourselves.”

The guy sitting next to Rizzo whose name and number I can’t read whispers to Mike, “I think he hates you.”

Mike mutters back, “I get the feeling.” Obviously, the boys think that Herb sits around, jabbing fingers at the roster and exclaiming:

“Quiet, Mike,” Herb orders, remembering to actually follow the rules of his name scheme.

Mike says, “Yes, sir.” Then he asks the person next to him, “Did he call me ‘Mike’?”

Well, what this script lacks in the subtlety department, it makes up for in sheer stupidity by thinking that everyone in the audience is as dumb as the scriptwriters, because the terrible joke refuses to die a natural death, as Herb states, “Yes, Mike. You heard right.” I’d threaten to kill a plant for every time this dead horse of a joke gets revived for another flogging, but I don’t want to destroy the Amazon, so I’ll try to control my burning rage.

Continuing to roam around the locker room, Herb rants on, “Tonight you had a chance to skate against the pros. Ask yourselves if you were ready for them, and then stop to think how tough the pros found the Russians. If you don’t respect them, you can’t respect yourselves. Practice tomorrow morning ten o’clock.”

With that, Herb leaves the locker room and steps out into the corridor, where Patty greets him, commenting, “You look pleased.”

“I am,” Herb declares as dramatic music throbs in the background as it must for every important piece of dialogue in this film. “Tonight they became a team.”

Wrapping her elbow in Herb’s, Patty inquires, “Does that mean you’ll win?”

Shaking his head, Herb, ever the downer, responds, “Not necessarily, but if we lose, we’re going to do it together.” In other words, Herb is saying:

There can’t be a much nobler team sentiment than that, so on that note, we’ll end this discussion until next time.

 

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: No Interviews but Whining out the Wazoo

We’re back in Minnesota and driving past a billboard that announces the North Stars will be facing off against our beloved USA Olympic squad on September 29^th. I can hardly wait, so I hope the movie speeds things along for us.

As they drive along in their station wagon, Herb tells Patty why he can’t make it to some social dinner because he has to run another practice before the next game, which apparently will take up one whole evening, and he has to check the equipment, which he claims will also take up an entire evening. Flipping through Patty’s planner, Herb asks if they can re-arrange the dinner for next Tuesday instead. Presumably, next week Herb will schedule a tooth removal appointment to get out of whatever event Patty is organizing, and the team will wonder why Herb can’t schedule a practice in the morning like a normal coach so they can have a night life.

Patty looks upset, and perhaps for once picking up on a human emotion in this film, Herb comments that it’s good to be home. Unappeased, Patty remarks that she hadn’t noticed he was home. This is the mandatory moaning about marriage scene, obviously. Patty, dear, I’ve got one question for you:

Trying again to stop an argument before it can start, Herb explains, “I didn’t figure it would take that much time. Would you believe I thought I would be with you more?”

“Sure,” Patty responds. “At least I believe you believed it, but I’m a realist, Herb. That’s probably why our marriage lasted.” Ouch. Herb needs to do a better job with the damage control if he doesn’t want to spend the next two weeks of evenings that he isn’t coaching practice and checking equipment sleeping on the sofa, since Patty is emitting almost all the signs of an angry woman right now.

Herb’s whole face crumbles like a condemned building, and it’s kind of sad, as he presses, “Is it that bad?”

Finally relenting, Patty shakes her head and answers, as she leans forward to cradle his neck, “No. Even if it was, it’d still be worth it.”

Deciding to turn the scene into a total mush-fest, Herb states, “Pat, there is one problem. I’m beginning to think we have a real chance of winning.” Given how much of a prophet of Olympic doom Herb has been to everyone about the odds of his team not being utterly outclassed in Lake Placid, you’ll have to forgive me when I say:

Seriously, until Herb ceases his habit of complaining to those nearest and dearest to him about everything pertaining to coaching this destined-for-failure Olympic team, I’m not going to believe that he thinks his team has a snowball’s chance in Hades of winning an Olympic medal.

Patty, fortunately for Herb, is more encouraging than I am, so she replies, “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Then Herb and Patty exchange a nice kiss on the lips, and it would probably be much cuter if Karl Malden had any good looks whatsoever.

Before things heat up too much between Patty and Herb, the scene transitions to the locker room, where the Olympic team is preparing for the game against the North Stars. Dave Christian is being interviewed by a reporter who is prodding about whether he feels any extra pressure because his dad and uncle were on the 1960 squad that won gold in Squaw Valley. Why is he asking this?

Humoring (or perhaps trolling) the reporter, Dave offers the following quote with maximum irony: “Okay. It has been my dream since I was a little boy to play on the Olympic team, ever since I was on bob-skates on the local pond. This is a final chapter in a long quest, and I know that with hard work, competitive edge, and good old American spirit, we can out-do even the gold-medal team of ’60.” Well, honestly, the triumph of hard work, competitive edge, and good old American spirit might be the whole theme of this movie, so it’s a relief that it doesn’t take itself too seriously with its joke of a script and terrible acting, though, maybe if it had taken itself a bit more seriously, the acting and scriptwriting would be better. That’s a debate for the comment section, though, so have at it there.

Realizing that he’s being a sarcastic jerk to someone who can ruin him in print, Dave claps the reporter on the arm and apologizes, “Oh, I’m sorry. Why don’t you try one of the other guys?” Jeez, Dave, way to throw your teammates under the media van. I’m sure they’ll love having a microphone shoved under their mouth as much as you did.

Before the reporter can badger some other unlucky player, Herb barges into the locker room ready to rip into anyone he can sink his teeth into, and I’ve found the perfect theme song the team should play every time he enters:

True to form, Herb snaps, “I have strict rules. No reporters in the locker room without my permission.” Looking at Coach Patrick as if Patrick is somehow to blame for the reporter breaking the rules, he adds, “I thought I made that clear.”

Striding toward the door with no shortage of swagger, the reporter remarks that he’s got what he wanted. That will probably just spill kerosene on top of Herb’s bonfire.

Determined to make things go from bad to worse, the reporter shoves his microphone under Herb’s nose and points out that he could use a quote from the coach to go with his story. Herb just glares at the reporter as if he wants to do this to the guy before the story can be published:

Deciding that getting a concussion isn’t worth it, the reporter takes his leave, and, as Coach Patrick shuts the door, Herb demands, “What the hell was he doing here?”

Being the total wimp he is, Coach Patrick pleas, “I can’t be everywhere at once. Look at it this way, Herb. The only place guys like that don’t bug you is in Russia.” Yes, in Soviet Russia, you bug reporter. Ha ha. In all seriousness, though, Patrick, just tell Herb that if he has a rule he needs to be the one to enforce it if he wants any respect from his players or the media. Don’t be such a carpet to walk all over, Patrick. It’s driving me bananas.

Here, Coach Patrick makes the mistake of laughing at his own (not particularly funny) joke in a desperate bid to reduce the tension that ultimately backfires when Herb glares daggers at him before barking at the locker room, “Get this, and get it straight. This is a team. There are no stars, no special people, and the media hype isn’t going to create one, so they’ll be no interviews. I repeat: no interviews! Next one will cost you a fine or worse.”

Now, at first hearing, this may sound like a tyrannical measure, but I’m willing to give Herb the benefit of the doubt here, since, although hockey is a sport that requires players to wear suits to meet with the media after the game, most of the interviewees have the grace and eloquence of a rhino smashing through a ballet. This is not necessarily their fault, because here’s the thing I want everybody to understand about hockey: this is a sport that mostly dudes (and also ladies, but the ladies cannot play professionally or with contact, sadly) from colder places such as Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the icebox parts of the USA, and Hoth get very obsessed with. So obsessed, in fact, that they often leave home at a relatively young age and enter a kind of icehouse world of hugging and intense warrior bonds. Basically, they spend eight months a year away from their families, bonding with other dudes, so they’re about as conversationally adept as Forrest Gump when he informs President Kennedy that he has to visit the facilities:

This heavy schedule leaves them no time to develop social skills, normal relationships with human beings who aren’t their teammates, and in extreme cases like Sidney Crosby, personalities. It also leaves them with no time to develop an adult sense of style. They generally seem to keep dressing exactly the way they did when they were fourteen, and if you look around your average middle school or high school, you will get a sense of why that is a bad idea. If I got to enact a rule in hockey tomorrow – okay, I’d make every single head contact illegal for real-but if I got to make a second one, it would involve gel rationing. Basically, everything you did after you turned fourteen, these guys missed because they had a game, and that’s why even articulate, relatively mature hockey players like Zach Parise show up to interviews during the Stanley Cup Finals carrying a baby cup instead of a Dasani or a Gatorade bottle stolen off the bench:

That meme just sums up every possible reason why Herb would not want his players doing interviews, because it just ends in awkwardness and embarrassment for everyone involved.

Bah doesn’t see the benevolence inherent in the dictatorship, so he mutters to Pav, “Hasn’t he ever heard of freedom of the press?” Hmm…my geek may be showing here, but isn’t freedom of the press only about a person’s right to write and publish whatever they want so long as it isn’t libel, and not about everybody’s ability to be interviewed whenever they choose? If you want to insist on your right to give an interview, I’d argue more from the grounds of free speech than freedom of the press, but that’s just me. It doesn’t really matter, since both are covered in the Bill of Rights, which most hockey players from the USA probably haven’t read, bless their souls.

Herb marches over to Bah and observes with a quiet menace, “I heard that, Harrington.” Maybe next time Bah should wait until Herb leaves the locker room to provide a whispered commentary. To nobody’s surprise, Herb then proceeds to flip out just as Bruce Boudreau did when he was coaching the Capitals and dropped about twenty f-bombs in the course of five seconds:

Stalking around the locker room like a prowling carnivore, Herb snarls, “Maybe you guys have forgotten, tonight we play the NHL, and they’re not impressed with your 8-2 record in Europe. If this was Russia, all you guys would be shipped to the Trans-Siberian All-Stars.” Ah, well, at least they made the All-Stars even if it is in Siberia #US Olympic Team Positives.

Jabbing a finger at Jimmy, Herb decides to make things extra personal, ordering, “Craig, get your act together. If you’re going to play hockey, play hockey. Forget the personal stuff. You can’t serve two masters.” So, hockey should be God, Herb? Got it. I’m waiting for the impending lightning bolt strike.

Tapping Rizzo’s pad, Herb goes off on another tirade, saying that if Rizzo wants to spend the rest of his life playing in the minors, he should keep playing as he is.

Then, Herb exits the locker room, leaving everyone feeling like the victims of this prank:

Reacting much like the last guy in that video, Rizzo storms into the hallway after Herb, shouting, “Hey, Herb!”

As he pivots to confront Rizzo, Herb asks, “Why aren’t you on the ice? Figure you don’t need it?” Maybe because you just finished speaking twenty seconds ago, Herb, and if Rizzo’s supposed to be on the ice, why aren’t you behind the bench? This is yet another piece of dialogue that makes no sense when thought about for more than two seconds, because there are limits in the in the official NHL rule book regulating how long players can spend on the ice warming up before a game.

Rizzo, replies, “How much practice I gotta do, that’s your decision, but how you tell me is something else.” Thank God someone on this team is actually trying to set limits with Herb. Patrick, please take notes on how this works, so you don’t get run over at least once every scene in which you make an appearance.

Herb, in his role as Master of the Cliché, retorts, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”

Rizzo counters, “Regular heat’s okay, Herb, but you’re on my back and Craig’s, too. We’re scapegoats.”

“So?” Herb answers with increasing mania in every sentence. “You guys are sitting around dreaming about the pros. Well, in a few hours, you’re going to get a chance to play them. You’re going to get a chance to show your stuff, and you’re all going to do lousy unless you play together as a team. They’re going to come out hitting, and you guys aren’t ready for them.”

Calming down a fraction, Herb continues, “Look, someone’s got to take the heat. I told you before, if I kept you it would be for the good of the team. Now you’ve got broad shoulders. I want to make a deal with you. If I use your first name, the heat is on you. If I use your second name, you’re the scapegoat. I’m using you to get to the whole team.”

The dialogue is of dubious quality as always, but I enjoy the second part of Herb’s comment, anyway, because I know that Herb had an arrangement with Rizzo and OC that if he used their surnames, he was using them to make a point to the team, and if he employed their first names, he was actually addressing them. It’s a neat concept that I’m glad the movie touches on even if the execution is as always somewhat lacking in the subtlety department.

His face contorting into something that might be an attempt at a wink (but looks more like a grimace) Herb instructs Rizzo to pass that message along to Craig, too. I guess Herb’s already breaking his own rules about when to use the last names. As Willy Wonka would phrase it, you lose, Herb.

When Herb walks away, Rizzo calls after him, “Hey, Herb. Which one is supposed to tell him, Mike or Rizzie? And who do you want me to tell it to, Craig or Jimmy?”

Herb gives a slight smile and walks away, which I assume means that the movie is establishing this as a lame little continuing joke. Please prove me wrong, movie.

Dramatic music swells in the background, and all I can think is that when whining becomes an Olympic sport, this team will definitely win gold. Until next time without the complaining of the participants of the movie assaulting your eardrums at every moment, I’ll leave you to ponder:

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: A Musical and Pictorial Odyssey through Europe

Now that Herb’s rattled a can under important people’s noses to fundraise pennies for his boys, the scene shifts to an airport. Inside one of the planes, Coach Patrick is shouting at the team to settle down because he wants to take a headcount, just as if this were an elementary school field trip.

After boarding the plane and flirting with a stewardess, OC (whose arrival proves that Coach Patrick should have waited until the final boarding call to begin his headcount) calls out to Coach Patrick that there’s a reporter outside wanting to interview Jimmy.

Leaning over Rizzo’s seat, Coach Patrick asks if Mike’s heard from Jimmy and Rizzo replies that he hasn’t, but he supposes that Jimmy’s going to show. This is a really weird conversation, to be honest. Shouldn’t Coach Patrick, who presumably booked the plane tickets, have the best idea of who is coming on the trip? Why would you buy planes tickets without being certain of how many people are going, and how do you, if you are in a position of authority on a journey, board a plane without a complete tally of how many members are in your group? Also, why even attempt a headcount if you aren’t sure how many heads you are supposed to be counting? Is it just to soothe pre-flight nerves or something? At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if this travel scenario ended as well as wrong way one during the cross-country trip in Dumb and Dumber did:

Craning his head to address OC, Coach Patrick instructs OC to just tell the reporter that Herb doesn’t allow interviews. This is a good piece of characterization since Herb’s hostile attitude toward interaction with the media was very reminiscent of Tortorella:

Showing how different plane security was back then, OC just gets off the plane to pass this message along to the reporter, whereas now he wouldn’t be allowed to just turn around and get off the plane, and the reporter wouldn’t have been allowed near the runway without a boarding pass.

A moment later, Jim bounds onto the plane and is greeted with a lot of playful swats from his teammates because:

As he takes his seat, Jim comments, “You guys aren’t going to the hotspots of Europe without me.” Then there is a lot of laughter and corny (and rather inaudible) joking about this statement. After that, while dramatic music swells in the background, the plane takes off, and the team has officially embarked on their European adventure.

The next scene takes place in Amsterdam (which is in the Netherlands for all of those who failed Geography 101), as the boys exit a hotel and board a bus. Still chomping on his ever-present wad of gum, OC saunters up to Pav and announces, “Hey, I’ll do you a favor, I’ll sit with you even though you are from Minneapolis.” I hope Pav responds like that soldier in the Monty Python French Taunter scene, which in my opinion is one of the pinnacles of British comedy:

Pav’s response is almost as epic. He scoots over to steal the seat OC was about to slip into, and when OC appears baffled by this slight, the guy sitting behind Pav (whom I believe is Bah, but can’t be sure since half the characters in this film all look the same and should be forced to wear their numbers and uniforms all the time so they can be distinguished from one another even if that is the dystopian plot of a thousand futuristic novels) taps Pav on the shoulder and informs OC, “What the troubadour is trying to say is he’s not from Minneapolis.”

Spreading his hands, OC says, “Okay, I’m sorry, all right?” After a moment’s hesitation, Pav relents and moves over so OC can join him. Lounging in his chair, OC asks Pav, “So, where’d you say you guys were from—the Iron Range? It’s the same thing as Minneapolis, isn’t it?” Yes, OC, a place with the term Range in it is obviously near the Twin Cities. At this point, I can just see OC thinking this on the bus ride through Europe:

“Sure,” Pav scoffs, not tolerating OC’s Boston ignorance and arrogance, “like South Boston is the same thing as Beacon Hill. You guys are really dumb about the rest of the country, you know that? We’re just as poor as you or Craig, so why don’t you just lay off the upside-down snobbery, huh?” Rock on, Pav. You tell him.

OC exchanges a glance with Rizzo, who is sitting across the aisle from him, and then Coach Patrick climbs into the bus, calling, “Okay, it’s going to be about ten hours before we get there.” When the bus fills with groans, he raises his voice even further: “Listen up, listen up, everybody is responsible for their own equipment just like here. Okay?”

There is a chorus of acknowledgement, and then Rizzo wants to know, “Hey, Patty, do we have to keep on our suit coats and ties or what?”

Coach Patrick tells the guys to get comfortable, and as everybody loosens their ties, he demands cheerfully, “Where’s my seat?”

Some banter ensues, and then OC stands up, telling Coach Patrick that he can take his seat if he doesn’t mind sitting in the kiddie section. Then Rizzo rises and takes OC’s seat, saying, “Take mine, Patty. I got it warm for you.” It’s like musical chairs or a Chinese fire drill.

As he slides into Rizzo’s empty seat, Coach Patrick opines, “You guys never let up, do you?”

Rizzo looks at Pav and remarks, “I guess we’re all a little homesick, huh?” Pav gives a small smile, and then Herb enters the bus, and the atmosphere drops to sub zero temperatures as the bus drives off.

Plucking away at his guitar, Pav serenades us with “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” since this is a family friendly film, after all, Just kidding. He really offers a rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.”

As Pav sings that tune, a montage of various moments from the team’s games in Europe flash across the screen, so I recommend that you hum the tune to yourself as I take you on a meme journey of the European games.

Les Auge gets smashed into the boards and is probably thinking:

Pav gets in a scuffle along the boards to show us all the definition of hockey:

Broten (whose last name is spelled correctly on his jersey) scores a goal, and it’s so awesome:

Christian has a goal, too:

Ramsey uses his backside to send an opponent into a somersault:

Then we’re back on a plane for the flight back home for America, as the whirlwind tour of Europe is done. As Ken returns to his seat, a stewardess asks for his autograph, which he gives to her. There’s whistling and college boy teasing, and then when Ken sits down, Jim asks why the married guys get all the attention. I’m sure their wives would also be interested in that answer. Maybe this isn’t such a family friendly film, after all.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ken answers. “She’ll get to you. They’re all big hockey fans in her country. She wants all the autographs.”

Leaning forward from the row behind Ken, Bill chimes in, “It’s about time we got a little respect.”

“Oh yeah?” Ken replies. “Well, according to her, there’s no way we’re going to beat the Russians.”

Rob, who is sitting next to Ken, shakes his head dismissively, and comments in a very smug tone, “Oh, that comes from living too close to the Soviets. It’s called geopolitical absorption.” Now, that may sound confusing, folks, but just remember, Rob’s only using sophisticated words to dress up a basic fact that everyone except evil egomaniacs like Napoleon and Hitler learned in European history, and those who don’t learn in boring class discover in a very painful practice:

“Geopolitical absorption, Robbie?” echoes OC, and this whole conversation is so hilarious, because these two are bantering about Cold War global politics, which is totally true to both their characters. “That’s the poet in you right?”

“Wrong,” Rob sasses back. “Political Science 401. It’s a fancy word that means being scared of the guy who lives next store.”

“Yeah, well, wait until we get to Lake Placid,” scoffs OC. “We’ll see who absorbs who.” This is all starting to sound very Freudian, but really this geopolitical debate was very amusing in an extremely intellectual way like the constitutional peasant scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail although the script and the acting are obviously inferior by light-years but why quibble over minor details.

There are a lot of grins to go around at this remark, and then Rizzo states as the stewardess starts collecting everyone’s signatures, “What I wouldn’t give to beat them. It sure would make up for a lot.”

As Rizzo gives his autograph to the stewardess, Bill addresses her thus: “Excuse me. I have it on good authority that you want details on our secret plan to beat the Russians.”

“Secret?” repeats the stewardess, following the traditional airline approach of being as rude as possible to the customer. “What is this secret plan? I saw your game last night. You’ll never beat the Soviet Union. Never.”

The secret plan, as devised by Herb, silly stewardess, is to lull the Soviet Union into a false sense of superiority by putting on poor performances like the one in Madison Square Garden before the Olympics, and then just dominating in the medal round.

There’s an awkward silence, and then OC declares, “We’ll see about that.” Then the scene ends by panning out to a shot of the plane soaring through the clouds, and on that note I’ll leave all my lovely readers to fly about their lovely business until the next installment. I hope everyone enjoyed their musical and pictorial trip through Europe. Please take all your belongings out of the overhead compartment before departing the cyberplane.

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Film: Don’t Quit Until You’re Fired

When we left off last time, Herb threatened to cut some of the boys if they caused any more trouble. Moving along with the theme of scratching some people off the team, Patrick exits the training center to be greeted with the following shout from the guy I believe is Dave Christian, “Hey, Patrick, you’ve got the names?”

It should also be noted that when he poses this inquiry, he throws his arms about so much that it would be tempting to include this moment in any top ten hockey goal celebration collection. Overacting was definitely the bread and butter of the actors in this movie, I assure you.

Obviously able to hear Dave’s shout, a tangle of boys including OC, Rizzo, Jim, and possibly Silk if my recognition skills aren’t hilariously subpar, stops tossing around a football and charges over to hear Patrick’s answer for themselves as Patrick explains, “Twenty-six names on the bulletin board in the morning. Rizzie, Herb wants to see you.”

Jim and Rizzo swap scared, startled glances, and then Rizzo, handing the football to Jim, replies, “Okay. I’ll see yous later.” Yous? Seriously, scriptwriters, didn’t we learn in third grade not to ever use the word “yous”? Then again, maybe the scriptwriters are still in second grade, which would explain a ton about the dialogue in this film.

I hate to be the grammar police, but what is this garbage assaulting my eardrums? In English, the word “you” functions as both a singular and plural noun. To avoid confusion, I understand the urge to use informal “you” plural addresses such as “you guys” which I’ve been known to indulge in myself in casual conversation or even “y’all” if you’re from the South, but “yous” just sounds ten times more ignorant than either of those even if it’s technically no more wrong. I maintain that college-educated people like Rizzo shouldn’t use the word “yous” unless they want to have their degrees revoked.

As Rizzo disappears to inflict more grammatical errors on Herb, Jim asks, “What? Is he cutting Rizzie?”

Wearing a slyly obtuse smile reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat’s when giving Alice directions in Wonderland, Patrick says, “Hey, I just work here. Who’s buying the beers?”

When the boys shake their heads in disgust and drift away, Patrick, demonstrating that he cannot pick up on non-verbal cues even when they hit him in the face like a sledgehammer, calls after the guys, “Hey, you telling me I’m not welcome?” Yeah, Sherlock, that’s exactly what they’re telling you, because if you came along for drinks, the scene would probably become as awkward as a dinner of semi-phallic food with a family of nudists.

At his most whiny, Patrick tries to mend the fences again, yelling, “Hey, where you guys going to be in case Herb wants to see you later on?” He is informed that the boys will be across the street at Cecil’s, having a few drinks before the cuts. We are spared the sight of any more Patrick wimpiness by a merciful scene transition.

The scene shifts to Herb’s office, where Herb is telling Rizzo, “Think it over, Rizzie. That’s my best advice.”

When Rizzo asks what will happen if he refuses, Herb responds enigmatically, “We’ll see, but if I keep you, it’s going to be for the good of the team.”

Apparently forgetting how to knock, Patrick bursts in, announcing, “I need you, Herb. In private.”

Plainly irritated at the abrupt interruption, Herb demands in a sharp voice, “Can’t it wait?”

With a shrug, Patrick answers, “Just trying to do the job you gave me.”

As he leaves, Rizzo tells Herb that he’ll have to let him know in the morning, which is a perfectly legitimate and sensible response to whatever Herb could have been proposing to him, but since rationality and Herb are like oil and water in this movie, Herb, of course, replies, “You’re making it hard on both of us.”

The scriptwriters decide that we don’t deserve to see the conversation between Herb and Patrick even though it was important enough for Patrick to barge in on Herb’s discussion with Rizzo, so, instead, the scene shifts to a diner, where Rizzo and Les Auge are chatting in a booth.

As we join them, Rizzo confides to Les, “Les, maybe I’ve got no future in hockey. I’m just average, and I’m too small. Maybe I would be better off coaching than playing.”

It’s interesting that this movie chooses to address the idea of Rizzo being an assistant coach for the 1980 team rather than a player on it, because shortly before the Olympics, when Rizzo was in a scoring slump, Herb basically threatened to bring Rizzo along as an assistant coach instead of a player, explaining to Rizzo that he would tell the media that Rizzo had gotten injured in training. Here, obviously, the timeline is altered and Rizzo is given at least the pretense of a choice, though if he refuses, I’m sure he’s wondering how astronomically high the odds of him being cut from the team are.

Not letting Rizzo wallow in the tough market that faces small hockey players, Les Auge points out that Herb has given Rizzo a choice, not cut him. Not exactly encouraged by this, Rizzo argues that Herb could very well end up cutting him later, but if he accepts Herb’s offer of an assistant coaching position, he’ll have the guarantee of being with the team through the Olympics.

Les Auge scoffs, “Yeah, as assistant coach. That’s terrific. That’s a once every four year job.” Actually, it’s not even that. If you’re an assistant coach for one Olympics, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be an assistant coach for the next. The coaching staff can undergo a complete makeover between one Olympics and the next. Being an assistant coach in the Olympics is a one time job, but if you’re savvy you could probably parlay that experience into another more permanent coaching job elsewhere.

Rizzo expresses this last notion, claiming that if he accepts the position of assistant coach for the Olympics, he could probably get a job as an assistant coach at some college when the Olympics are completed.

Aggravated, Les Auge explodes, “Oh, come on. Wake up! You’re a hockey player! Let me tell you something. Smart guys hang in until the end. If you have any hope in hell of playing, just stay with it.” Geez, I’m feeling inspired myself now. Perhaps Les Auge was the one who should have pursued a career in motivational speaking…

Leaning forward, Les Auge continues, “You know, baseball and football. There you’re talking about big business. There’s lots of opportunities. You’ve got a chance here. Don’t give up.” I’m glad that someone is around to encourage Rizzo to try to take one of the few opportunities open to American hockey players at this time.

Les Auge concludes his grand speech: “Listen, if you can’t find your name on that list tomorrow, then come to me and tell me about your coaching jobs, but until then, just keep running them into corners. Don’t quit until he fires you.” I’ve got to say that my affection for Les Auge is growing. I’m getting sad that he’s going to be cut, whereas I can’t wait to see the back of Thompson.

Switching scenes again, we’re in a living room with a lot of the guys from the team including OC, Bill Baker, Rob McClanahan, Ken Morrow, and Jim Craig talking amongst themselves while an agent tries to hold court about the upcoming game schedule, saying with varying notes of pathetic desperation, “Okay, fellows. All right. Hold it. Listen up. Listen up now, fellows. Listen, it’s a good schedule. Some games in Europe. Some exhibitations against the NHL. You’ve got sixty-one games in all. That’s in five months. Only the fittest survive this.”

I hope this is meant as a not-so-subtle info dump for the movie audience, since it would be really pathetic if the boys needed an agent to tell them what they could easily garner from a schedule for themselves. These guys shouldn’t need an agent to read off a paper what teams they’ll be facing and how many games they’ll be playing. If this Olympic squad has even half the organization of a recreational beer league, they’ll already know all this basic information.

Placing his drink on the coffee table, Ken remarks, “Yeah, that’s the point. A guy could get injured right out playing hockey with a schedule like that.” This hurts my heart, since it was untimely injuries that forced Ken Morrow out of the NHL early. At least he got some Stanley Cup rings with that Islander dynasty first, though…

With a meaningful glance at Morrow and the other boys, Kaminsky leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, and counters, “Not if he stays on top of his game. Okay, you can’t prevent bad luck, but cheap injuries, that’s something else.”

This is so wrong that I feel the dumber for even considering for a millisecond the possibility that such an absurd premise could be true. Cheapshots are so terrible precisely because they are unpredictable and illegal. Check out this compilation of NHL cheapshots to see what I mean. Yes, I’m aware those all come from a more recent era, so here’s a collection of cheapshots from the 1980’s, and you can bet that injuries sustained during the 1970’s would probably be even worse, since hockey was more physical in the 1970’s than the 1980’s and safety gear was more primitive and optional. Just good Lord. Is Kaminsky really going to contend with a straight face that the victim of every cheapshot in hockey history could somehow have prevented the injury by being “on top of his game”? That’s like saying every robbery victim who ever existed deserved to be stolen from just for not looking after possessions properly.

Fortunately not falling for this drivel, Jim points out, “Yeah, but a pro gets paid for the risk of bad luck.”

The guy (whose face I can’t recognize) next to Jim chips in his two cents, adding, “Yeah, and a pro’s insured.”

These are legitimate concerns, since an athlete’s livelihood depends on his body’s health, so if there are questions about where the money to treat an injury would come from, I could definitely see that as something that could scare guys with other options away from the Olympic team.

Kaminsky answers, “We’re working on that.”

Then there is a knock on the door, and OC opens it to reveal Herb, who enters and glares around the room to put all the peasants who had the gumption to worry about their medical insurance in their place. This is just like Peterloo.

OC cracks his fingers together in a signal for all the boys to leave, which they do, leaving Herb alone with the agent and Kaminsky.

The agent dons his jacket and announces that he’ll be leaving for a drink, gesturing at Herb and Kaminsky before saying, “With you two, it’s personal. If you get past that, call me. We’ll talk business.”

Once the agent leaves, Kaminsky clears his throat and offers Herb a drink, which prompts Herb to vent, “You said you’d keep away from my kids.”

Not responding to this, Kaminsky asks, “How come you get along so well with my partner?”

“Leave him out of it,” Herb snaps. “Who invited you here?”

Kaminsky answers that it’s just common sense for him to be here and a rumor that Herb needed him.

As the Rumor Weed Song from a childhood of listening to Veggie Tales echoes in my head, Herb goes into full snide mode, asserting that of all the things he needs, Kaminsky is the least and that the rumor Kaminsky should have listened to was the one detailing how much he didn’t care for Kaminsky. I have observed that, thus far, Herb is the only character in this film who is allowed to have even halfway witty put-downs.

Not descending to Herb’s level, Kaminsky remarks, “Well, as I see it, Herb, you are caught between a rock and hard place. That tends to make a man nervous, tight. Sometimes makes him look for something to focus it all on, and something tells me that I’m your Patsy.” Kaminsky is so dramatic here. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him break into this catchy tune about how much of a Patsy he is.

Shaking his head, Herb comments, “You’re nobody’s Patsy. A guy doesn’t get to be big and important in pro hockey circles by being a Patsy.”

Kaminsky admits that’s true, but argues that he did whatever was necessary to advance in pro hockey circles in order to further the cause of young American hockey players, because, according to him, he’s the only one who believes in them and wants to give them the chances that Canadian junior players usually had first dibs on as he is convinced that American players can be as good as Canadian ones. He’s also adamant that this approach isn’t making him rich.

Unmoved by this, Herb sarcastically suggests, “You ought to register as a charity. I’d send you a couple bucks myself.”

Kamisky responds that would be just fine, and then goes on to make the following appeal, “Now, listen. If you’re going to cut fifteen of the best that we represent, would you please tell me now? I’ve got pros sniffing around every one of them, Herb. These kids need my advice. If I believe you’ve got half a chance at a good showing, I’m going to tell them to stay. If I believe that the Russians are going to humiliate you, my advice is going to be to split, to get them out before they make laughingstocks of themselves.”

As I noted in the previous section, this is about as straightforward and fair a deal as you can expect from an agent, and it’s a pity that Herb is too stubborn to cooperate, because, no matter how much he tries to paint Kaminsky as a villain here, I don’t perceive him in that light. Kaminsky is just trying to do his job by looking out for his clients. He wasn’t hired to be the Olympic team’s GM, after all.

In this vein, Kaminsky continues, “Herb, give me room. Maybe I can help you. You keep playing God, you’re going to find yourself with an empty locker room. Now I’m doing my job as a lawyer, as a player’s rep.”

Herb volleys back, pointing at his chest, “Maybe in your head, but what about here? What about your heart?”

Game, set, and match to you, Herb. You said the secret word. I’m sure that if Kaminsky digs deeply into his masochistic heart he’ll realize that he really does want to see as many of his clients embarrassed on the Olympic stage as possible.

Pressing on, Herb demands, “Law or athletics? Kaminsky, I’m inviting you to join the squad as an honorary member. Put it on the line for the team. Just as though you were wearing the skates yourself. This is no ego trip for me. You know as well as I do that no athlete ever made it without sacrifice for the game, not for meat.”

When Kaminsky says that he’s not questioning Herb’s motives, Herb retorts, “Just my sanity, right?” Well, at this point, given how manic you’ve been acting, Herb, that would be a totally justifiable thing to doubt…

Before Kaminsky can answer, Herb states, “Let’s play it straight. This whole thing as far as I’m concerned is a fantasy.”

Kaminsky looks about as startled by this revelation as the first caveman who discovered that wood ignited. The overacting really makes every scene extra unbelievable.

Getting past the almost comically horrid acting, Herb throws all his cards on the table, observing, “And you know what? I’m beginning to doubt your sanity, too.”

Again with that incredibly fake expression of shock, Kaminsky asks, “Why me?”

Herb fires back, “You coming all the way out here. You, the fastest telephone in the East, coming out here. I’d like to see your cost analysis of this trip.”

Kaminsky confesses that Herb is right, and this wasn’t a business trip, as he came out to see for himself whether Herb was obsessed because Herb was the last man cut from the ’60 gold medal team and that could cloud Herb’s judgment. When Herb presses for Kaminsky’s verdict on his obsession level, Kaminsky sums the situation up perfectly by explaining, “I think you’re crazy like a fox.”

On that note, I’ll leave you until next time to speculate on how Herb will sneak into the chicken coop and which chickens in the coop he’s after anyway…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Beers and Brawls

After Herb and Patrick’s heated discussion about agents, the scene transitions back to the arena, where Patrick is putting the boys through a skating drill that involves him blowing a whistle every couple of seconds at which point the guys performing the drill come to a hockey stop.

Since a hockey stop is one of the first things a player should learn, I find it vaguely amusing that any significant Olympic training is devoted to honing what should be an automatic reaction by now. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t laugh, because the Florida Panthers have been known to have more men on the ice than on the bench as a hilarious result of a routine line change, so perhaps Herb is prudent to return to the basics, and not assume that his players were ever taught the fundamentals of hockey. Just because you have skill doesn’t mean you were educated in technique, after all.

Watching the hockey stop drill from his perch on the bleachers, Herb shakes his head and makes notes on a clipboard. Then the scene shifts to his office, where he is seen removing pictures from the wall and tucking them in an envelope containing photos of the guys to be cut.

After that, we’re in a bar, and a tender is placing a drink in front of Jim Craig. I think Steve Guttenberg actually looks better in the dim light. I guess for Steve Guttenberg moonlight is becoming, and total darkness even more, but I digress. Let’s focus on the fact that some curly-haired girl is with Thompson but obviously bored because he’s ignoring her, so she saunters over to Jim, giving a radiant smile, as she says, “Hi.”

Jim glances over his shoulder to check that she’s talking to him, and then answers with a grin, “Hi.”

Leaning closer to Jim, the girl asks, “You a hockey player?”

Jim replies that he’s a goalie, and then the girl jumps to the question that really interests her, wanting to know, “You alone?”

His mouth twisting, Jim responds, “Well, if you don’t count the twenty-odd hockey players roaming around this place, yeah, I guess you could say I’m alone.”

The girl and Jim share a laugh at that, but I’m not really amused. Jim Craig actually had a fiancée during this time, so unless their engagement involves some wacky beliefs about only women needing to keep their virtue or a provision about one night stands with strangers just met in bars being completely acceptable, I cannot approve of what’s going on here.

Thompson, who is also not a fan of the road this conversation is speeding down, steps out of the shadows and demands, “Hey, Craig, shouldn’t you be in bed?” Jeez, Thompson, beds might not be the best objects to bring up when your girlfriend is hitting on another guy, but the jealous male is clearly not a rational creature, so I will give a partial pass.

When Jim responds with a half smile that it’s a thought, Thompson continues in an even more belligerent tone, “Well, uh, Mary’s my friend.” What a nice depiction of female empowerment by the script writers: having the girl be argued over by two hormonal guys like the last cookie in the jar would be quarreled over by Kindergartners. Maybe the boys can reach an agreement to share her or something, since what she wants doesn’t factor into this territorial squabble at all.

Pointing between Mary and Thompson, Jim seems to have an epiphany, saying, “Oh, oh.” Then he drops the gauntlet with, “Well, any friend of yours, Thompson, is a friend of mine.”

This just doesn’t feel like Jim at all, honestly. I have trouble imagining him as the kind of guy who would want a one night stand with a random girl he met at a bar, and I don’t think that he’d wish to meddle into other people’s relationships like this. He seems like the type to seek out deep connections, so this whole conflict just is wildly inconsistent with his character, as far as I’m concerned.

Thompson, drawing on a retort common among elementary students, snaps, “Get lost, Craig.”

Raising his eyebrows suggestively at Mary, Jim asks, “Shall we?”

Obviously on the verge of losing whatever reign he was keeping on his temper, Thompson snarls, “Move it, or I’ll move you.”

This is a textbook example of a menacing threat, so Jim can only respond with a classic insult: “Thompson, you’re such a jerk.”

Deciding to make this whole situation even more childish, Thompson hurls a drink in Jim’s face, and Jim bolts to his feet to take a swing at Thompson. A brawl ensues, but we don’t get to see any more of it, since the scene switches to Herb’s office for about the umpteenth time in this film.

Herb begins haranguing the boys about the fight: “Let me tell you guys something. I think it’s time for a pep talk. All this stuff that you guys are up to is—no, forget it. You guys are already acting like big time. I know. Some of you have big time lawyers, and some have big time offers, so I guess a college coach’s pep talks won’t work. “

Oh, so now you understand about agents and contracts, eh, Herb? Do you have selective memory loss or something?

Rizzo pipes up, “Mr. Brooks, I think this is all just a misunderstanding.”

Respect and rationality don’t have any effect on Herb, who growls, “Mr. Brooks is my father’s name. I’m Herb.” Ha. I actually like that line, because I remember reading an article where Rizzo described how when he first introduced himself to Herb, calling Herb “Mr. Brooks,” he got basically the same answer. Something is somewhat accurate in this film. I feel like doing cartwheels.

Put in his place, Rizzo replies, “Yes, sir.”

Getting up to put marks under pictures of Jim and Thompson, Herb threatens, “One more X, and you boys are going right back where you came from. I could lose a lot of good players that way maybe.”

Basically, Herb is disciplining these boys like an elementary school teacher would, warning that if you get two marks next to your name you don’t get to go to recess, which, in this case is the Olympics. This is a reasonable course of action, since everyone knows that the average hockey player has a maturity level of a six-year-old. I mean, otherwise stoic Rangers like Ryan McDonagh get excited to add a piece to the Stanley Cup puzzle in the locker room and don a weird hat probably coated with Leetch’s sweat and Messier’s lice because it marks them as their team’s MVP for the game. In a nutshell, coaching hockey players is like running a daycare center with toddlers who cuss a lot.

Going on with his admonishment, Herb states, “But you’re already making a name for yourselves that will keep you out of pro hockey forever. Understand me and understand me good, nobody is indispensable. Nobody. I want a winning team, but more than that, I want a team that I can be proud of. I want men on that team that have character. I would rather cut you all, and be embarrassed, and be shipped down to my old job than to win with a bunch of kids who would dishonor me and themselves. Nothing is worth that. Now get out.”

For the most part, that rings true to Herb’s philosophy, so hurrah for a speech that actually makes sense in this film. May it not be the last.

After the boys make their awkward departure, Patrick comes in, shuts the door, and points out, “Herb, some of them are barely old enough to vote. They’re just kids.” Come on, Patrick. Don’t be a softie. Everyone should be perfect by age twenty-two if not sooner.

Herb, demonstrating a remarkable ability to read the minds of strangers on the other side of the globe, counters sharply, “That’s exactly what the Russians think about them, so that’s one surprise we can give them. Show them some kids with character. Might take the edge off losing.”

Ugh, this movie drives me crazy. Why does that last sentence have to exist? Is it really necessary to ruin a good bit of characterization with a complete sabotage of it in the next sentence? It makes perfect sense that Herb would want to surprise the Russians with how his boys could play with the discipline of men, but it makes no sense to me at all that Herb would already be bowing his head and envisioning utter defeat. It’s been his dream since the Sixties when he first saw the Russians play at World Championships to come up with a team that could match their speed and cycling plays, so he isn’t going to give up about a week into the process after all these years of working to earn a chance to coach an Olympic team.

At this rate, I expect that, instead of the stirring speech he delivered in the locker room before the game against the Soviets, the film version of Herb will just declare: “Well, guys, we can count this game as lost without even playing it, but if we keep the score close, we should be able to beat out the Finns for bronze on point differential. Go for the bronze, because that’s really the best America could ever hope for, but if we don’t get the bronze, at least we made it to the medal round, which is more than anyone could expect from a bunch of idiotic college kids.”

I’ll leave you all to stew in that sacrilege until next time…

 

 

 

Breaking Down a Miracle on Ice Movie: Not-So Secret Agents

Last installment, we were left wondering whether certain guys—namely Johnson and Paradis—were, to paraphrase Herb’s terminology, tough enough to stand up. Now we’re ready to begin to find out, because the boys are engaged in a speed skating drill around the rink that involves Herb barking out the seconds and the verbal equivalent of a whip’s encouragement.

Patrick, in his role as the blind optimist on this coaching staff, remarks that they’re fast, and Herb, as the Debbie Downer who is never satisfied, counters crisply that they aren’t fast enough. At the moment, I’m left with the general impression that even a blazing comet wouldn’t be fast enough to please Herb, but maybe a European would, since he shouts at the boys, “You guys think you can beat the Europeans skating that way? Let’s go! Hit your spots!”

Talking to Patrick again, Herb instructs his assistant coach to tell Paradis to put his heart into training because he’s shirking. All the evidence thus far points to Paradis being about as able to stand up under the barrage of Herb’s training as a Dixie Cup can the wheels of a Chevrolet Suburban.

Throwing his hand in the air, Patrick protests, “Come on, Herb. He’s one of the best skaters out there.” Ah, yes, but can he beat the Europeans skating like that? We’re not going to find out unless he puts his heart into it.

Expressing this sentiment, Herb retorts, “But he’s not giving us one-hundred percent. You tell him I want no loafers on the forward line.”

As Herb is shouting more of his unique brand of encouragement at his charges, a short man in a suit who has the unfortunate distinction of having a hair malfunction—at least, I hope it’s a hair malfunction and not an intentional style– that makes him resemble nothing more than an Oompa Loompa enters the arena.

Leaning against the edge of the rink, the newcomer offers a wave, an odd lingering glance, and a perky, “Hello, Herb. If you’ve got time later, I’d like to talk to you about one of my clients, Grazier.” Homoeroticism yay! If I were Herb, based on the scary sidelong glances this man was casting over me, I’d be filing a restraining order instead of taking the risk of talking to him alone, since he makes the Stalker Song ring in my ears like alarm bells.

Seriously, how did Grazier’s parents decide this walking sexual harassment case waiting to happen was a wise choice to represent and presumably at times be alone with their child? Now I can imagine why Grazier busted. He had this creep as his agent. Most likely, he’s in a padded room somewhere, a quivering mess as he tearfully uses a rag doll to show the therapist all the places where the scary man touched him. That being said, I sincerely apologize for poking fun at Grazier when he was sitting next to OC on the plane, because I didn’t know the deep, dark pain he was living with after the abuse he suffered from his agent.

When Herb just stares in revulsion at this borderline pedophile, Patrick supplies, coming to the rescue in his alternate persona of Captain Obvious, “It’s Grazier’s lawyer.”

Instead of calling the police to escort the unwelcome agent from the premises, Herb demonstrates a notable disregard for Patrick safety, ordering him to get Grazier’s lawyer out of here. Being the prototypical gullible second-in-command, Patrick does this, and I’m burning incense in gratitude that he didn’t end up dead and bleeding in an alley somewhere.

The scene finally shifts from the creepy agent back to Herb’s office, where he removes Grazier’s picture from the wall, tearing it and venting to Patrick, “It’s a waste, a total waste. The only reason he came to camp was to make the pros think he didn’t need them.” That’s weird, since I didn’t see any pro scouts lurking around the rink. They must have concealed themselves behind the bleachers really well.

Shaking his head and gazing downward, Patrick says in an almost whine, “I’m sorry, Herb. It’s just one guy. I can’t be everywhere.”

Unrelenting as granite, Herb counters, “Well, you’ve got to be. Patrick, you’re my eyes and ears with this bunch. I thought we had a deal with the lawyers. Who’s next?”

Instead of pulling out an answer from a fortune cookie, Patrick responds, “Herb, most of what the guys tell me—well, it’s like over beer—in confidence.” Here Patrick sounds like he’s a busybody at a neighborhood block party pretending to be reluctant to share a supposed friend’s secret when really he would take the utmost joy in it and only requires the slightest prodding to spill out everything he knows and suspects. Of course, I don’t believe that Patrick means to be devious here, so I won’t blame him for that. I will fault him for being a stupid coward, though, and let me expound upon why.

Patrick is an idiot to bring up the aspect of confidentiality, as it lets Herb know that he and some of the boys have something to hide, and it must be pretty terrible if it can’t be shared without scandal. If you have a secret that you want to keep, the first step is not posting up a gigantic billboard declaring that you have one, Patrick. Apart from the fact that Patrick is a total moron, we also learn that he is not a vertebrae, after all, since he has no backbone and will be telling Herb everything he knows as soon as Herb glares at him.

Then again, the boys who confide in Patrick are partly to blame for Herb uncovering their secrets. I mean, what sort of fool entrusts any important, confidential information to this film’s version of Craig Patrick? Merciful Lord, you’d be smarter to confide your secret to your worst enemy, because at least when your foe came forward with your dreadful secret, everybody would consider the source and probably decide it was a vicious falsehood. However, when someone who seemingly has your trust reveals a confidential story about you, everyone is going to believe it, even though that person has just proved himself a liar. That Sociology 101 lecture is done now, so we can progress with the rest of the scene.

Perhaps Herb is as disgusted with Patrick’s flakiness as I am, because he scoffs, “Really? Well, you’d better get it through your head that you’re part of management now. I’m not asking you to be a spy. I’m asking you to do your job as my assistant, and if this bunch is going to disappear on me, let me know, so that I can quit before I get fired.”

Not to be a Negative Nancy about this whole script, but that bit of dialogue would have been a million times better without that final clause. First of all, I doubt that Herb would be in jeopardy of getting fired just because some boys that could have been on the team chose to go pro. Since the pros were where all the money was, it would be hard for any coach to convince all the top talents to remain amateur for the Olympics. It’s the same sort of reason why NCAA coaches today aren’t routinely fired just because some of their best players move onto the greener pastures of the NHL. USA Hockey would know that and not create a revolving door of coaching staff unless they felt that something else was seriously lacking in Herb’s coaching.

Apart from the whole idea of Herb being fired because some guys deciding to go pro being rather far-fetched, it’s not consistent with Herb’s character to have him be such a defeatist. He’s the type of guy who is going to fight tooth-and-nail to make this team successful, and he’s not going to quit at basically the first sign of adversity. Anyway, it would be totally hypocritical of him to demand unconditional commitment to the team from the boys when he’s prepared to abandon ship over any imagined leak. Ugh. What a way to butcher Herb’s character.

Deciding to betray every confidence he’s ever received from anyone on the team in one fell swoop, Patrick rifles through a list of the boys’ names and announces, “Morrow’s firm, but that might change. He’s getting married in two weeks.”

Herb’s murderous look conveys how much he hates weddings and all the cake that comes along with them.

Patrick continues, “The Eastern guys. They’re all borderline, especially Craig. He’s hard-pressed financially.”

Leaning forward to check a list on his desk, Herb says, “Well, if he’s going pro, he’s going to the Atlanta Flames. They own him. Is he talking to them? Phoning?” How is Patrick supposed to know that? Is he supposed to have wire-tapped Jim’s phone or just eavesdropped on line for the pay phone?

Patrick answers that Jim hasn’t been contacting the Atlanta Flames, but “that doesn’t mean anything” because “he’s represented by lawyers.”

Herb demands, “By who—Kaminsky?”

When Patrick replies by Bob Murray, Herb snarls as if Patrick invented the concept of athletes being represented by agents, “Same thing, damn it. They work together, Patrick. I thought they promised to keep these kids amateur.”

Trying to placate the angry Herb before he orders a human sacrifice, Patrick says, “So far so good. They’re telling the guys to stick with it—to see the team you come up with.” When it comes down to it, that’s really the best a team’s management can expect from agents. An agent’s primary responsibility is to represent his client’s interests, not a team’s. That’s what they’re hired to do, and there’s nothing wrong with them doing their jobs, although Herb, naturally, doesn’t perceive it that way.

All bitterness, he grumbles, “So now I’ve got another set of guys to answer to: lawyers and agents.” Welcome to being a GM, Herb.

“They’re part of the business, Herb,” argues Patrick, obviously calling on his experience as an NHL player. “You’ve got to face it: our best guys have other choices, and they know it.”

Shaking his head and poking his desk with a fervent finger, Herb declares, “Guys with choices on their minds don’t help us one bit. This has got to be the only thing in their lives. Not choices, this.”

Herb is starting to remind me of another Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory character who always wanted stuff now and didn’t care how. Herb would be really comfortable in a Communist regime, obviously, as he doesn’t want to run his team at all like a democracy. With Herb’s manic anti-choice stance, I can easily picture the following scene transpiring as the team’s bus pulls into a rest stop in the middle of the night…

Patrick: All right, boys. I’m going to run into Seven-Eleven to buy us all some drinks. Let me take a tally of who wants what. Raise your right hand if you want a can of Coke, and your left hand if you want a can of Pepsi.

Herb: Damn it all to Hell, Patrick! How many times do I have to remind you not to overwhelm their toddler brains with choices? Choices shouldn’t cross their minds at all. They should only be thinking about the Olympics, not sodas. Just buy about twenty-five bottles of Poland Spring, and be done with it. Water is good enough for this bunch. We need to leave soft drinks to the soft.

Perhaps having similar thoughts to the ones racing around my head, Patrick is so aghast he is speechless, and I’ll leave my readers to recover from their heart attacks at Herb’s mania until next time.