Meet the Press: Kelly Schultz sports many hats in Bemidji

(Photo courtesy of Kelly Schultz)

Kelly Schultz had a friend who had a good problem to have. With that said, it was still a problem.

Karin Housley, a Minnesota State Senator, had hoped to attend the 2017 Kentucky Derby. But her husband, NHL veteran-turned-assistant coach Phil Housley, had commitments south of the state border.

Phil’s Nashville Predators were on a travel day between Games 5 and 6 of the Central Division Final. They would be home the next day to ultimately abolish the St. Louis Blues, their second obstacle on their road to the Stanley Cup Final.

Schultz, whose own hockey knowhow manifests itself through play-by-play duties with the Bemidji State women’s program, learned Sen. Housley would be attending a Derby viewing party in Nashville. The founder of her own millinery company, she enhanced Housley’s experience by crafting her a fascinator in Predators colors.

“What is a fascinator? That’s what everyone asks me,” she said in a recent email exchange with Pucks and Recreation. “Well, that’s what our friends across the pond call those elaborate headpieces worn at royal weddings.”

Royal weddings, and other occasions that have the look of a time warp to The Age of Innocence. For example, annual horse races on this side of the Atlantic that date back to 1875.

That was how Schultz came through for Housley. She eased the downside of her dilemma by making her look the part as both a horse-racing and hockey enthusiast.

The premise and destination of the lavish lid resonated on multiple fronts for the Beavers broadcaster as well. When she is not immersed in sewing or sports, Schultz is spinning music for Babe Country 98.3 FM in Bemidji.

“I think most people outside of Minnesota would be surprised about how popular country music is here,” Schultz admits.

Babe Country — whose moniker is a takeoff on Paul Bunyan’s pet blue ox — is one of two country stations in the market. Both happen to be the two most-listened to stations in the area.

But for the St. Paul native, it took a childhood journey to the Tennessee capital to get hooked. Before that, she was content with a steady diet of Neil Diamond and Minnesota’s own Prince.

“My dad owned every one of Neil’s albums,” she said, “and I could sing ‘Sweet Caroline’ word for word before it became a popular stadium anthem.”

Schultz’s parents were regulars at the annual Marine Corps League convention, which was generally the basis of the family of three’s summer vacation. Country stations were practically more rampant than rest areas in most of the rural locales they drove through. But that alone was too impersonal to sway the budding all-round radio connoisseur.

The year she traveled to Nashville, an encounter with Lorrie Morgan filled that void. The “Five Minutes” singer became Country Music Acquaintance Zero when she posed for a photo and gave Schultz her autograph.

“Since then, I’ve met Little Big Town, Jo Dee Messina, Craig Morgan, Phil Vassar, Trace Adkins and Lee Ann Womack,” said Schultz. “All thanks to working in country radio.”

Twin piques

Where Schultz (nee Freichels) credits her father, Arthur, for instilling an infatuation with music, she credits her late mother, LaVanche, for imparting an interest in design and a sports zeal. Taking the latter love to the airwaves has yielded a similarly quantitative and qualitative list of friends and influences.

After her first season of calling the Beavers in 2007-08, Schultz joined the Association for Women in Sports Media. The AWSM’s roster is a who’s who of broadcasting and print pioneers. Those who Schultz has rubbed elbows with include Christine Brennan (USA Today), Linda Cohn (ESPN), Suzy Kolber (ESPN, Fox) and Lesley Visser (Boston Globe, ABC, CBS).

But long before that, she had another female sports-crazed voice to feed off of at home. LaVanche all but single-handedly orchestrated one of her daughter’s earliest hockey memories when she scored three North Stars tickets. The game in question yielded one of many memorable melees between Minnesota’s Dino Ciccarelli and Chicago’s Denis Savard.

“My mother stood up and yelled, ‘Let’s see some blood. C’mon Dino!’” Schultz recalled. “My dad and I slumped down in our seats, pretending not to know the crazy woman screaming.

“I loved that about her, her passion for the game.”

That fervor trickled down and built a steady depth in the next generation. Schultz’s former babysitter, who dated a member of the Hill-Murray School’s powerhouse team, inspired her to enroll at the St. Paul-area Catholic institution herself.

Much like Nashville with country music, going there enlivened what she already knew through the media about her state’s unique high-school hockey craze. She graduated in 1990, as did Craig Johnson, a soon-to-be Minnesota Gopher and eventual veteran of 10 NHL seasons. They both barely missed out on Hill-Murray’s fourth state championship run the next winter.

But tragedy struck in the home barely six months before Kelly Freichels’ commencement. On Nov. 12, 1989, LaVanche suffered a fatal heart attack at age 47. Kelly’s sports and sewing mentor was gone far too soon.

A self-proclaimed “self-taught milliner and costume designer,” Schultz has carried on to retain a repertoire that neglects no aspect of LaVanche’s legacy.

In the process, she has found ways to honor other influential relatives. She named her enterprise the Angeline Alice Millinery after her two grandmothers, Angeline Freichels and Alice Grubich. With it, she has produced such sports-oriented gear as BSU newsboy caps and a Minnesota Vikings fascinator.

Of her mother, Schultz says, “She made everything from blankets to curtains to cute little jumpsuits and dresses when I was a little girl. She taught me how to sew when I was about eight years old, and the rest is history.”

If she did not put that history on hold, she at least relegated it to the proverbial backburner for a time. The way LaVanche’s other pastime lived on through Kelly all but derailed the latter’s fashion design dreams in college.

Enrolling at the University of Minnesota, she went to class in a Twins 1987 World Series championship sweatshirt. Most of the other would-be design majors, she recalled, “had multi-colored hair and fingernails painted black.”

Apparently, the notion of creatively combining different interests did not strike the professor. The concept of team-inspired clothing was as foreign as that of, say, the Nashville Predators at the time. (The franchise came into existence in 1998.)

Hearing her professor single out her attire as “what not to wear if you wanted to be a fashion designer,” Schultz shifted gears back to sportscasting. And once again, the comfort of home fostered her path. A TV ad for Brown College in Minneapolis touted the institute’s radio and television certificate program.

“I had already tried community college, university and now decided technical college might be the way to go,” she said.

Upon graduating in October 1993, Schultz moved to the Wisconsin border town of Hudson. Her first array of radio duties there set the tone for her present-day regimen. By weekday, she jockeyed for a big band station. By weekend, she served a contingent of University of Nebraska alums determined to pick up Cornhusker football games in Stillwater, Minn.

“I spent every Saturday during the college football season making sure those listeners got to hear every play,” she said. “I even became a bandwagon fan. The Cornhuskers were pretty good that year. And I’m still friends with my very first radio manager, Tom Witschen.”

The ‘one-woman-show’

Professionally speaking, Schultz’s relationship with Bemidji State has easily outlasted all prior attachments with any other entity. Five years into her tenure, she attained an undergraduate degree in sports management from the university.

Despite all of that, or maybe because of it, she is not afraid to be firm with the Beavers when the situation calls for it.

After answering Pucks and Rec’s inquiry, Schultz jetted off to Potsdam, N.Y., to call BSU’s two-game set with defending national champion Clarkson. In the series opener, the contesting goaltenders waged a classic arm-wrestling marathon before Bemidji broke down late. The Golden Knights escaped with a 2-0 victory.

Upon returning to the booth for Game 2 this past Saturday, Schultz had a blunt introductory mashup prepared. Based on Friday’s postgame pickups with head coach Jim Scanlan and her own observations, she drew a clear-cut conclusion.

And being the DJ that she is, she cued up the perfect song of the day for the background. She set Saturday’s opening essay and highlight package to a soundtrack from the British pop band Keane. Whether the emphasized refrain, “You could do so much better than this,” illustrated or lightened the mood was in the ear of the listener.

“The Beavs are way better than how they played last night,” Schultz offered in the intro. “At least, I think so. And most BSU fans would agree after watching them a week ago.” (Bemidji had tied Syracuse, 0-0, then crushed the Orange, 5-0, to start its regular season.)

That is what 13 years going on 14 of seven-day autumn and winter work weeks have done to her. She has a life beyond the Beavers, but willingly uses her outside passions to underscore her care for the team.

After her Hudson gig, five years back across the state border took Schultz around a multitude of Mississippi River towns. In June 2004, she moved north with her husband, Brian Schultz, and joined him on the Beavers beat.

For the first year, she produced the football and men’s hockey broadcasts that he announced. She kept her vocal cords in shape as a sideline reporter and substitute studio anchor.

Those dues became dividends after three years. BSU women’s hockey went in house for a play-by-play announcer, granting what Schultz dubs “the opportunity of a lifetime.”

The gig began with seven lean seasons under Steve Sertich. The Beavers finished .500 in only one season under his direction. They have more recently risen to a reckonable status under Scanlan. They cracked the 20-win plateau in his first two seasons, reached the 2015 conference tournament final and pushed the dynastic Gophers to a rubber game in a best-of-three quarterfinal series last year.

The first winning campaign she covered, 2011-12, coincided with another upgrade of sorts for Schultz. She started her first DJ job since her Hudson days with a Beaver Radio Network sister station, WMIS FM 92.1. She added the country station to her plate in 2016. But she has not subtracted much, if any, glamorous or grunt work from her sportscasting side.

“I have always said, ‘I’m at my best when I’m busy,’” she said. “Proudly, I also wear many hats, pun intended.”

Unless the Beavers are on the road, Schultz spends five weekdays hosting a four-hour midday music program on Babe Country. The rest of the time, she takes charge of fielding off-air phone calls and welcoming visitors to the studio.

In a typical travel-free week, she will accumulate no fewer than 26 hours on the air. Outside of her primary day job, the other six hours come from two games, plus the two-hour “Go Green Mill Coaches Show” on Wednesday nights.

That does not take into account her research and reception hours. She spends her Sundays preparing questions for Monday media day with BSU’s other women’s athletic teams. Hockey grants access on Tuesday, and Schultz wastes no time weaving what she extracts into the coming weekend’s first game broadcast intro.

Thursday’s extracurricular activity, as it were, entails cobbling clips from around the women’s WCHA. Last season, her 10th covering the league, Schultz began producing a podcast condensing the conference’s week that was into a span of three-to-five minutes.

And all of this is still leaving out her millinery minutes. That notwithstanding, the aroma of artificial ice never fails to pump a second wind into the State of Hockey native’s tank.

“Friday is my favorite day of the week,” Schultz said. “I’m a one-woman show. I engineer, produce and voice my broadcasts, which includes pregame coach and player interviews, intermission interviews with players and postgame with our BSU coach.”

The single-sleep turnaround between Games 1 and 2 may constitute the cruncher of the week. But the call for creativity helps to cancel some of the pressure. Case in point, the “better than this” motif of the Clarkson series.

When the Beavers perform favorably and get results, country star Luke Bryan’s “That’s My Kind Of Night” may cue up. Or Hunter Hayes’ “Where It All Begins” may punctuate anticipation, as it did for this season’s opening game.

“That’s where my love of music really shines,” said Schultz. “I love finding songs that fit what just happened.”

Royal inspiration

The 2017 Kentucky Derby brought symmetry to two crucial developments in Schultz’s life. She had befriended Karin Housley from a distance during the 2009 Men’s Frozen Four, where Brian broadcasted BSU’s semifinal appearance. Schultz tagged along and used her new Twitter account to keep the future state senator up to speed.

“I later found out that she was married to former NHLer Phil Housley and that they had a cabin on Leech Lake in Walker, Minn., just 40 minutes from where Brian and I called home,” she said. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

Two years later, while Prince William and Kate Middleton were tying the knot, Schultz read a text from another friend. Highlighting the headwear of the wedding guests, the message insisted, “Kel, you could totally make these!”

On that particular Friday, the Beavers had been out of season for nine weeks. The woman whose Twins sweatshirt once ostensibly precluded such activity spent the evening tinkering with textiles.

The productive burst of inspiration was the basis for her business. Within a year, she was invited back to the Twin Cities for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Fashion Week’s Emerging Designer Showcase.

Leading up to this year’s Derby, the Angeline Alice Millinery garnered a mention in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The May 5 listicle singled out seven dealers of “stylish Minnesota hats,” and Angeline Alice was one of the few establishments based outside of the Twin Cities area.

Schultz’s insatiable appetite for originality is the enterprise’s key intangible.

“Since April 29, 2011, I have made hundreds of fascinators,” she said. “Every one of them I make is unique. I pride myself on that, because who wants to show up to a party wearing the same thing as someone else, right?”

But granted, “unique” does not mean devoid of any similarity to another product. Schultz’s ambition last spring was such that her fascination with Predators fascinators did not stop with one Nashville hockey wife.

The Preds’ playoff run would prove to be veteran forward and first-year captain Mike Fisher’s swan song. He had spent his last six-plus seasons in the city most natural for his wife of seven years, Carrie Underwood.

With Housley’s fascinator, Schultz had already intertwined two of her three defining passions. With the Queen of Country, she saw a seam with which to complete her ultimate (pun inescapable here) hat trick.

Housley happily accepted her fascinator, and passed along the other to Underwood. Two-and-a-half weeks after the playoffs ended, the Angeline Alice account fished for feedback via Twitter. “Hi @carrieunderwood! How did you like the fascinator I made for you in @PredsNHL's colors? Hope you ❤ it!”

More than four months later, there is still no confirmation of receipt from the Queen herself. But Underwood’s silence does not miff a levelheaded radio personality whose own itinerary can make a honeybee blush.

“I didn’t take it personally,” Schultz said. “I’m sure she gets inundated with fan mail, gifts, et cetera.

“Maybe someday Carrie will reach out to me for something special to wear to one of those award shows. A girl can dream, right?”

Ranking the 10 best Mighty Ducks movie quotes

The official silver anniversary of The Mighty Ducks is finally here.

The NHL Network will shrewdly honor the occasion by screening the film Monday evening. Meanwhile, this site has gone on a, shall we say, Flying XXV for the last 25 days, touching on a comprehensive array of Duck-related topics.

Today’s finale of the 25 Duck Days series comes back to the cultural phenomenon’s point of origin. As collaboratively selected by the Pucks and Recreation writing team, here are the best of the original Mighty Ducks movie quotes.

10. “A team is something you belong to, something you feel, something you have to earn.”

Evoking the words of his late father, Gordon Bombay directs this statement to his boss, Gerald Ducksworth. Tellingly, he is also in earshot of his former coach, Jack Reilly when he asserts, “A team isn’t a bunch of kids out to win.”

You have to think he is asking for a couple of sour glares in that context. Predictably, he gets just that from Ducksworth and Reilly alike. As such, the added underlines to each man’s antagonistic status lend an appropriate touch of humor to the homily.

9. “Does that sound stupid to anyone else?”

This is how Greg Goldberg closes his first set of dialogue with Charlie Conway and Terry Hall. Charlie has just reminded him that his goaltending position means the puck is “supposed to hit you.”

Whether it’s courage, a basic grasp on the game or both, Goldberg is lacking in this early stage. Besides the amusing ignorance it conveys, this line illustrates how much he and the team have to learn. In that vein, it sets the core target audience up for a bolder flavor of fulfillment later on.

8. “To think I wasted all those years, worrying about what you thought.”

The big bad side of Reilly has persistently haunted Gordon, as three of the film’s four flashbacks affirm. In the latter-day championship, the worst of Reilly surfaces when a current player intentionally injures Gordon’s pupil.

At that point, Gordon flatly confronts Reilly with this statement. And maybe by standing up to him before the current Hawks, he will spare the next generation similar torment.

But for the moment and the kid-movie obligations, Gordon’s handling of the cheap shot is the game’s clear turning point. He sets up his empathetic audience for the sweetest sip of redemption possible.

 

7. “They know that if they mess with one duck, they gotta deal with the whole flock.”

Bombay prepares to put his respectability on the line when he says this. He can confidently doff his coat to display the jersey because he has made his point about the strength of a sum.

This lesson briefly backfires when the bulk of the team strikes upon misconstruing Bombay’s response to Reilly’s disrespect. But the entire squad uses it again in school, precipitating the point of reconciliation with their coach. And of course, they elicit it again when the Hawks mess with a Hawk-turned-Duck in the playoffs.

6. “Teach them to fly.”

The title team name is still not a concept when Gordon visits Hans for the first time in adulthood. But as if the eventual sponsor is not enough, Hans’ words of advice must have held partial sway.

As the movie and the series alike progress, Hans’ stress on this sentence keeps resonating. In the original, Gordon uses the metaphor upon unveiling the uniforms, and later when calling for the “Flying V” play. The team punctuates the championship turning point in D2 with a “Ducks fly together” rallying cry.

And poignantly, at Hans’ funeral in D3, Bombay entreats everyone to “Remember it was Hans who taught us to fly.”

5. “Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, Mr. Ducksworth!”

Before taking his own long-time-coming verbal punch, Reilly watches Bombay dish out a more humorous helping to Ducksworth.

Earlier in the film, the habitually brash Bombay pokes fun at Ducksworth’s surname the same way. The key difference this time is that he does so to his face rather than his subordinates.

And why not? He is freshly fired at that point, so what does he have to lose?

 

4. “Losing fair is still losing.”

After Gordon’s gamesmanship improves him to a self-proclaimed 30-0 in the courtroom, he takes the proverbial Icarus flight. His taunting of rival lawyer Frank Huddy ignites Huddy’s killer instinct for three subsequent driving-related charges.

But in between, Bombay’s counterpoint to Huddy’s “I’d just like to lose fair” establishes his lofty learning curve. Add the fact that this is only two scenes removed from the first flashback in the opening credits. Reilly’s lasting damage to his demeanor has as much room for improvement as Goldberg’s fear of the puck.

3. “You really quacked at the principal? Are we Ducks or what?”

Gordon and the audience know something the kids do not when he marvels at how his whole team incurred a detention. He comes to their school within moments of quacking at his own detested authority figure.

If not for those concomitant displays of like-mindedness, all hope might have been lost. But the stars have aligned, and it’s smooth sailing toward Gordon’s prophecy of a playoff date with the Hawks.

The scene even offers a subtle callback, be it intentional or unintentional, to another Emilio Estevez classic. Fans of The Breakfast Club can doubly appreciate Gordon wearing his Ducks varsity jacket to a detention classroom.

2. “I believe in you, Charlie. Win or lose.”

Standing up to Ducksworth within Reilly’s earshot is Bombay’s first step toward self-exorcism. Confronting Reilly after a Hawk maliciously sends a Duck to the hospital for cheap scoreboard gains is the second.

The final step is sending Charlie off on his penalty shot with a pep talk 180 degrees removed from Reilly’s. After three rancid reflections on that scarring episode, he takes his third stride toward redress with substantive strategy advice on a move involving three dekes.

Is it a trite and sappy pattern through the adult eye? Yes. But it does what it is supposed to for a narrative of this nature.

1. “I’m proud to be a Duck, and I’d be proud to fly with any one of you.”

The movie paces itself before lending its title relevance, but Bombay’s speech makes the wait worthwhile.

This comes on the other side of Bombay ceremoniously revealing his team jersey after his flock loyalty lecture. It also marks the first of the aforementioned takeoffs on Hans’ advice.

And one could argue that it even gave Disney a boost when it chose to branch out the brand. Despite persistent ridicule, plenty of NHL personnel have been proud to be Ducks over the last quarter-century.

In Edina, it’s cool to be a cake eater

The Cake Eater Classic sounds like it belongs on a one-shot marquee in a satirical primetime cartoon episode. Its trophy looks like it was pilfered or purchased from the Food Network’s hardware vault.

Not so on either count. Since 2005, the multi-tiered girls’ hockey tournament has been a culturally quintessential event in Edina, Minn. It combines the game that every conversation in the area seems to come back to with a historically significant expression. And it culminates with the victors hoisting a silver, three-layered cake-shaped cup topped with a hockey-player figurine.

“It’s one of the coolest trophies for a tournament I’ve ever seen,” local product and Buffalo Beauts forward Corinne Buie told Pucks and Recreation.

Buie all but represents an intersection of evolution in Edina. The town’s first ambassador to professional women’s hockey was born seven months before The Mighty Ducks depicted her community.

A crucial storyline in the 1992 film revolves around cultural and class clashes in the Minneapolis area. In so doing, it popularized an epithet — traced back to the out-of-touch “Let them eat cake” statement misattributed to Marie Antoinette — that had been frosting the rich side for decades.

“It has followed the community since the ’50s or early ’60s,” noted Pete Waggoner, the Edina Hockey Association’s tournament director, in an email to Pucks and Rec “Minneapolis Washburn was known as the original Cake Eater city/school.”

The Mighty Ducks does not mention Edina by name. But in the 1994 sequel, the Adam Banks character cites it as his hometown. With that confirmation, the citizens of the historically affluent suburb could retroactively view the villains’ district as enveloping their locale.

In the movie, the district is home to the dynastic Hawks peewee program, whose embarrassment of talent and resources is luck of the geographic draw. It is like what the Montreal Canadiens enjoyed in the NHL’s pre-draft era, when every Quebecois prodigy was automatically theirs.

But the Ducks’ (nee District 5) astute ally, Hans, discovers one key exception that took otherwise unnoticed effect. He informs coach Gordon Bombay that, due to offseason realignment, the Hawks MVP Banks’ block now sits in their territory. The league promptly addresses the error, leaving Banks to either transfer or forego the balance of the season.

Upon first entering his new team’s locker room, his literally soft-spoken line typifies his innocence of snobbery. “I just want to play hockey.” That does not suffice for Duck Jesse Hall, who curtly interrupts captain Charlie Conway’s welcome statement to mutter “Cake eater.”

Hall had used the same term earlier upon learning that Bombay is himself a former Hawk. The statement sets off a temporary strike by the long-underprivileged District 5 team.

But by the final time Hall speaks the term in the screenplay, he ices it with decidedly sweeter connotations. As Banks is wheeled off after sustaining a concussive hit by an old teammate, his new friends pledge to avenge his injury by derailing the dynasty to usurp the state championship.

Waggoner, like many locals old enough to remember the movie’s release, sees a real-life turning point for the term there. The likes of Buie have since grown up savoring the playful jabs.

“I think my parents heard it more when they were growing up,” she said. “My cousin, who played in a neighboring community, definitely didn’t let me forget about the nickname. It was always in good fun, though.”

As more Cake Eater Classic alumnae move up the ranks, the history and sustained relevance of the epithet-turned-endearing moniker fades. Grace Bowlby, a Wisconsin Badgers freshman and veteran of the U.S. 18-and-under team, admits she has never watched The Mighty Ducks or D2. (She did, however, see D3, which again contains no mention of Edina and only one utterance of “cake eater.”)

“Personally, the term never made sense to me,” Bowlby told Pucks and Rec. “It never really bothered me when I heard it.”

She added, “I’ve heard it mainly from people that aren’t from Minnesota.”

Based on Bowlby’s accounts, bona fide ’90s kids who grew up on the movies have ample reason to feel old. And neither Bowlby nor Buie have listened to the “Cake Eater Anthem,” a viral video from the Game On! Minnesota YouTube channel.

But the locale’s largely agreed-upon choice to reclaim the phrase is as fresh as pumpkin pie every November. The Cake Eater Classic consists of six tournaments for different age groups and skill levels at the three-sheet Braemar Arena. A slot in the showcase is arguably the most coveted of any weekend on the Minnesota girls’ hockey almanac.

The host Edina Hornets jealously guard their nest while their visitors crave a bus ride home with the metallic confection. Attendees can indulge in real cake from Braemar’s concession stand while getting their fill of competitive hockey.

Some locals sport T-shirts bearing the slogan “Cake, the Breakfast of Champions.” Others emulate the Green Bay Packers fan base by substituting dessert-shaped hats for Lambeau Field’s legendary cheese lids.

The town’s youth basketball program has even taken the tournament’s name for its own bonanza.

“There was some controversy over the name,” Waggoner recalls. “Some members in the Edina Hockey Association and in the community did not want to draw what was deemed negative attention to it.

“My belief is that the use of the term in The Mighty Ducks normalized the term. And to most Edinians, it is a term of endearment.”

More importantly, for Buie, Bowlby and future youth players, the Cake Eater Classic has catalyzed the Hornets’ endeavor for equal renown in girls’ and boys’ hockey. Bowlby was born and Buie turned six the year the EHA introduced a formal girls’ program. Buie did not cross over from the boys’ side until age 10.

Today, she noted, “We have the largest girls’ youth ice hockey program in the state, if not the nation.”

The program was rich with incentive based on the town’s blue-blooded history of boys’ hockey. Edina High School won its first boys’ state title in 1969, and has logged 12 banners in total. The late Bill Nyrop was on the 1969 team, then had a 209-game NHL career with Montreal and Minnesota.

Calgary Flames president Brian Burke, New York Islanders forward Anders Lee and Islanders prospect Kieffer Bellows highlight other Edina alums. Bellows’ attendance is a result of his father, ex-North Star Brian Bellows, settling into town for his post-playing career. Lou Nanne and Doug Risebrough have done the same, as have many other key North Stars and Wild figures.

But if there was any inequality of concern in Edina hockey, it was in the gender gap. Buie’s bloodline was instrumental in rectifying that. It began with two of her aunts playing in a house league cofounded by her grandparents in the mid-’70s.

“It started because my grandmother, Joann Buie, went to the Edina City Hall to request the program,” she noted. “She also did work on behalf of the Minnesota League of Women Voters to help ensure that Edina High School adhered to Title IX legislation.”

When that progress was still blooming, a prodigy named Jenny Potter played interscholastic hockey for the Hornets’ boys’ JV team. One year after graduating, she helped Team USA to the first women’s Olympic gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Games.

But in Potter’s time, there were still no paid professional leagues for women. In her former town, it took almost another decade for the girls’ game to freeze its own foundation. With that said, the impact was instantaneous when it did.

“It was fun to have our own tournament,” said Buie, who was in the eldest division at the event’s inception. “And I think we probably thought it was kind of funny to be called the Cake Eater Classic.”

Funny name, sweet-tasting sideshow outside the dashers, serious interest between the boards. Nearly four months before the 2017 Cake Eater Classic, the EHA tweeted that registration for the event was “nearly full.” The six levels combined for three remaining openings at the time of the July 31 warning.

In the scholastic ranks, visiting parties are bound to covet bragging rights more than before. Before she left this year, Bowlby — who in 2013 helped the Hornets to their first Cake Eater crown at her level — captained Edina’s first Minnesota girls’ state championship.

“There had never been an Edina team to actually win the Cake Eater tournament,” she said. “And it’s one of the better tournaments that we played in all year.”

Now Bowlby’s former mates will wear a target not unlike the Hawks. Or perhaps they are best described as one of the new favorites, much like Banks’ team in the sequels.

Whether they appreciate the references or not, chances are, like Banks, they just want to play hockey. And for her part, to answer Jesse’s admonishment to Banks, Buie will not forget which side she is on.

“Although the movie was inaccurate about a lot of things,” she said, “it was so cool to have such a classic hockey movie based off my hometown. I always rooted for the Ducks!”

Miracle’s Nathan West: ‘It all started with Mighty Ducks 2’

Long before he played through a bruise on the leg as Rob McClanahan, goaltending prodigy Nathan West launched his acting endeavors by taking a bruise on the palm. Before he fought a rival-turned-teammate in character as McClanahan, he briefly brawled with Ken Wu. And before he reenacted an historic Olympic gold-medal clincher, he surrendered a scripted Goodwill Games shootout decider.

Nathan West entered the pristine, palm tree-flanked mansion, and felt right at home.

The aroma of Anaheim Arena’s untouched ice resembled that of his home rink in Alaska. The unseen machinery sustaining the surface made for a comfortable cold snap. The state-of-the-art (by 1993 standards) scoreboard hovered with an infectious aura of professionalism.

And the open space and free time left limitless roaming and running possibilities until it was time to get the work. The eventual influx of seat holders signaled that time. The time for the cast of D2: The Mighty Ducks to christen the rink of the soon-to-be-renamed Arrowhead Pond.

“It was crazy to see people walking in that building, and we had been all over,” West recalled to Pucks and Recreation. “It was our playground.”

At age 14, going on 15 by that summer’s end, West and his castmates were about to feel a fever of fun spread to the ceiling. Audiences reportedly exceeding 12,000 flocked with free admission to the July and August shooting sessions of D2’s gold-medal game scenes.

For West, it did not matter a single ice chip that he was playing an anonymous foil. He had an uncredited part as the goaltender for the villainous Iceland squad.

Anyone remotely fascinated with hockey goalies is bound to learn the late Hall of Famer Jacques Plante’s old saying. “How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?”

Being a movie, D2 was a somewhat different dynamic. Its championship segment packed the majority of the Mighty Ducks trilogy’s Harlem Globetrotter-type antics. Yet it was faithful to the sport with repeat jokes at the expense of the netminder for its Washington Generals. (Or should we say Reykjavik Hershöfðingjar?)

As part of his job, West has his character’s shutout spoiled by a pint-sized converted figure skater late in the second period. He then confronts the scorer after being taunted, only to lose the fast fight upon getting the stick-gloves-shirt treatment.

Iceland proceeds to blow a 4-1 lead in the third period en route to a 5-5 regulation tie and eventual shootout loss. Along the way, West is snowed by USA Ducks speedster Luis Mendoza. He is mentally handcuffed by Russ Tyler’s equalizer on a preposterous “knucklepuck” shot from the other attacking zone. In the ensuing shootout, he is struck by Fulton’s famous slap shot with such force, he falls flat on his back with his head across the line and the puck trickling in after it.

By his own account, the audience ate it all up.

“Everyone was abuzz in that building,” West recalled. And he could not have relished the energy more.

The mixture of athletes, actors and observers were crossing into various forms of virgin territory. For the spectators, this was a free tune-up for when world-class professionals stepped onto the Pond’s ice in the same uniforms as the film stars. For the actors, this was a riveting replica of an athlete’s big-game experience.

And for the athletes, West included, this was an opportunity that never promises to duplicate itself. Here he was, a high-school hockey player with big-league dreams, taking time 2,400 miles away from home to inaugurate what many would come to liken to a Taj Mahal of sports facilities. One of those writers, Orange Coast Magazine’s Tom Singer, added that “Sports open the doors for international prominence.”

“We skated on that ice before the NHL Ducks even did,” he marveled.

“I don’t think you understand how much it means to those young kids to get on that ice between periods at a National Hockey League game,” he continued. “We all find it to be adorable, but for those kids, that is something that is engrained in your mind. It will never leave you, it’s going to be there for the rest of your life.”

Almost a quarter-century later, the afterglow of the opportunity still manifests itself across West’s life. Everything he has done on the ice, in other camera-laden settings, in a recording studio or even at home, he can trace back to D2.

Singularly scouted

The Nathan West of the ’90s was Nathan West, hockey prospect. Goaltending was his natural position, and the first scout with Mighty Ducks ties noticed.

Jack White, a Canadian-born animator by trade, was mixing Hollywood with hockey as early as the mid-’70s. With the help of Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr, just to name two, he started introducing the sport to novice skaters in the Los Angeles area.

His skills clinics grew rapidly in age range, and his roster of clients eventually included movie stars who needed to learn the game for a role. His earliest coaching credits included Michael Keaton’s Touch and Go and Rob Lowe’s Youngblood.

When Disney got in on the game, it lured White out to Minnesota, where he served as the hockey technical advisor for The Mighty Ducks. He also portrayed the referee in several ice scenes.

The icebreaking movie hit theaters on Oct. 2, 1992. Within five months, the company had its own NHL franchise in Anaheim, and the choice of nickname was natural.

To go with that offshoot, a sequel was already in the works, and it would follow White back home. The protagonists of The Mighty Ducks were going global in a fictitious Junior Goodwill Games tournament, shot on location in and around L.A.

Coming down from another direction and another prototypically puck-friendly state, West and his team had a real weekend tournament. By that point, Mighty Ducks of Anaheim merchandise was permeating the pro shops, and a Jr. Mighty Ducks youth hockey program was seeing action.

The local players from that program would make convenient recruits as extras and skating doubles. But White wanted more bodies to fill the rosters of the USA Ducks’ opponents. He found one in a visiting goalie from Alaska who turned in a tournament MVP performance.

West was not even a novice actor at that point. He had never thought about acting. Yet he remembers White pulling him aside after the final game of his visit. “All of a sudden, he’s like, ‘Hey, my name is Jack. Do you want to me in my movie?’” he recalled.

 

 

As it happened, West’s father was living in Southern California at the time. That connection was a pivotal blessing the likes of Jake Gyllenhaal lacked two years prior. (Gyllenhaal, a lifelong L.A. resident, had been cast as Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks. But his parents reportedly withdrew the 11-year-old from consideration, as the role would have entailed spending two months two time zones away.)

And so West spent two-and-a-half more months in the fledgling hockey market, where his assets were maximized, and his weaknesses muffled. Iceland, which supplanted Russia as the villain due to the then-recently ended Cold War going banal, was meant to spook with its superior size and skill.

For that, West had the physical maturity and the positional proficiency White and company needed. That, in turn, earned him the privilege of making his self-proclaimed “playground” out of the Pond.

But all playgrounds are bound to witness the occasional injury and upset. For the Hollywood neophyte, who hardly foresaw his future roles in Miracle and numerous non-hockey projects, the growing pains typified that reality.

Appropriately, West’s only “line” to make the final cut in D2 was a reaction to a relatively mild ailment. During Iceland’s 12-1 romp of Team USA in a round-robin game, Fulton is ordered to unleash his searing slapper in hopes of getting his club on the board and generating momentum.

Instead, West snuffs the shot with a deflating snare. Famed play-by-play announcer Bob Miller conveys the immediate letdown to the U.S. faithful, then speculates that the impact of the grab would leave a mark.

Sure enough, on cue, West doffs his trapper and lets out a pained grunt as he unveils a puck-shaped bruise on his left palm.

The goalie did have more to say, West recalls, but “I think I was so bad they had to just cut it all out.”

With that being said, “that really kicked off my acting career without my even knowing that I wanted to be an actor.”

The following fall, West returned to Anchorage and tended the nets for another three years at Robert Service High School. The Service Cougars hockey program, which later produced Brandon Dubinsky, is a big enough deal to have its own cheerleading squad. And West’s own overall popularity among his peers got him the title of 1996 prom king.

 

 

Afterward, he ventured back to the Lower 48 to pursue major-junior hockey rather than college. Undrafted but undaunted, he landed a roster spot with the OHL’s Detroit Whalers, where Robert Esche was the incumbent starter. Esche entered the 1996-97 campaign as the Phoenix Coyotes’ sixth-round selection, and the difference in the two stoppers’ ceilings translated to the stats.

Esche, who went on to play 11 seasons in the pros, saw action in 58 of Detroit’s 66 regular-season games. West managed 16 credited appearances, posting a 2-3-2 record, .841 save percentage and 5.31 goals-against average.

The 1997 Whalers sank before Sault Ste. Marie in the first round of the OHL playoffs. The Greyhounds, led by soon-to-be No. 1 NHL draft pick Joe Thornton, doubled them up in five games by a cumulative score of 22-11. With the scorchers on Esche, West made one relief appearance, which turned out to be his last formal hockey shift.

But to his pleasant surprise, there were still talent-seekers at his games who wanted to hear from him. Through Whalers bench boss Peter DeBoer, West received a card from a Michigan-based casting agent.

As his melting ice and dripping blue paint grew more readily apparent, he trusted the confidence of the entertainment scouts. Despite some previous frustrations at acting workshops, he decided to dabble in it again. He patiently paddled through the rapids of tough-love coaching and directing, and the dividends surfaced in the form of his first three acting credits in the autumn of 1998.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “I look back now and think, ‘Gosh, it’s been an incredible career,’ and it all started with Mighty Ducks 2.

“Here was this Disney move that offered me this opportunity that opened a door to a whole world that I never thought was there.”

Esche, who capped his junior career as an OHL all-star in 1998, made the American League’s all-rookie team in 1998-99. West did not fare too shabbily for himself in the concomitant television season. He made two appearances on The Practice and one on The Adventures of A.R.K. In the subsequent spring, he guest starred on ER and Smart Guy.

His career change would only look smarter after the change in millennium.

Forward thinking

The Nathan West of the ’00s was Nathan West, actor, newlywed and new parent once, twice and thrice over. Of those titles, the latter two were only true because of the first.

“My wife, who I love with all my heart,” he said, “I met her in an audition.”

Chyler Leigh, of Grey’s Anatomy and Supergirl fame, had also been acting since adolescence. Their paths crossed in 1999 on the set of an upstart series, Saving Graces, which never saw action on the screen. But the next fall, they co-starred as guests on 7th Heaven, and they were both cast in 2001’s Not Another Teen Movie.

While filming the movie — Leigh’s first and West’s third after Bring It On — he popped the question in a manner initially disguised as a standard scene shot. The moment lives on as part of the DVD extras.

They were wed in Anchorage in the summer of 2002, a time when another Disney hockey movie was brewing. It would be West’s chance to live a portion of yet another, though distinctly different, stretch of the studio’s sports output.

When he was a teen thinking he would be a one-off actor, Disney lived off kid-oriented comedic fiction for its athletic accounts. D2 came amidst the Mighty Ducks trilogy, plus Angels in the Outfield, The Big Green and two Air Bud projects.

The pattern had changed to living legends by the time West was perpetually pursuing new roles. When movies were his staple, Remember the Titans, The Rookie and Invincible defined Disney’s sports-movie output.

Between the second and third of those, the company conceived a film that would retell the story of the 1980 Olympic team. West was between agents when casting calls went out for it. But Leigh’s agent, whose husband was an avid recreational skater and hockey fan, made sure the word got to him.

Upon obtaining the script from Leigh, he recalls, “I read it, and I was, like, ‘I have to be a part of this.’” He went so far as to tell director Gavin O’Connor, “there’s no way in hell they’re making the film without me.”

 

The basic common threads with his first film a decade prior were not lost on West. In fact, he said, the connections were “100 percent” apparent. While he took nothing for granted, he knew that the prior Disney association, which came about specifically on account of his hockey skills, would be a plus.

But in stark, though ultimately favorable contrast to D2, West was no longer an outnumbered novice actor. O’Connor wanted proficient pucksters for every role, and, with the exception of retired NHL netminder Bill Ranford, no stunt skaters.

“His approach was genius,” West said, “because we’re telling a true story.”

Eddie Cahill, for whom Ranford doubled behind the mask as Jim Craig, and Kenneth Mitchell (Ralph Cox) would be West’s only company of seasoned actors portraying the players. Of the 20 young men who comprised the Olympic team, 10 have logged zero Internet Movie Database credits before and since Miracle.

And only West went in knowing what it was like to be on the ice with cameras and clapboards everywhere.

Nonetheless, he found one more way to stray from his comfort zone. He eschewed his familiar goalie pads and tried out as a skater, landing the part of first-line forward Rob McClanahan.

With McClanahan’s most famous contributions to the 1980 narrative, West was on a smooth path to some intriguing hockey movie motifs. Where the Iceland goalie shakes off the bruise to his palm, McClanahan resolves to “play on one leg!” when the opposite limb brooks a contusion.

“I never really thought about that,” he admitted. “Really interesting.”

But he should know as well as any ex-athlete that those bumps, bruises and scars are the investments for glory. And as an actor portraying an athlete, West scored the privilege of being involved in the last onscreen goal of D2 and Miracle alike.

In the U.S.-Iceland rematch at the Pond, the deciding shootout is deadlocked, 3-3, entering the fifth and final inning. In the top half, Adam Banks — who has his own laundry list of past ailments — looks to give the Ducks the lead. He does so by pinballing a close-range wrister in off the back of West’s right leg. Gunnar Stahl’s subsequent stubbornness to shoot into Julie Gaffney’s glove means Banks’ goal stands as the clincher.

“His approach was genius, because we’re telling a true story.” - Nathan West on Miracle director Gavin O'Connor

In the last game of 1980 Olympics, none other than McClanahan snapped a 2-2 deadlock for Team USA’s first and permanent lead with 13:55 to spare in regulation. The cast’s reenactment of that goal was the only highlight of the Finland game to make the Miracle cut. West can be seen burying the biscuit through the five-hole in slow motion as Kurt Russell, in character as Herb Brooks, narrates.

West is as good as Hollywood hockey’s answer to Edgar Renteria. Just as the Major League shortstop hit a walkoff base hit to clinch the 1997 World Series and grounded into the final out to lose the 2004 title, he got to be on both sides of a gold-medal goal.

When reminded of that distinction, he was practically as speechless as McClanahan would have been in the real moment.

“I guess I feel kind of honored to have been a part of those moments,” he said. “They come at a moment in each of these films that are so pivotal to telling the story. Whether it’s nonfictional or fictional, it doesn’t matter.”

West also has the honor of being doubly featured in fan-fiction crossovers. On Jan. 11, 2009, a clever YouTube user by the pseudonym “mmattuc” uploaded a “preview” for D2: The Minnesota Miracle. The mashup takes the audio from Miracle’s trailer and replaces the accompanying footage with clips from D2.

“I did not see that,” West admitted, sounding intrigued. “I should probably check it out.”

To instill interest among the indifferent-to-hockey majority of the American populace, Disney unquestionably needed a flare of compelling intensity in its Miracle trailer. The film’s reenactment of Brooks’ confrontation with the injured McClanahan was a natural fit.

For the Duck-oriented rendering, mmattuc interspersed clips of Gordon Bombay protesting Dean Portman’s abrupt ejection from the first Iceland game and Portman’s ensuing locker-room tantrum. But naturally, viewers only hear Russell and West dubbed over.

Other highlights in the creation include three of the USA Ducks’ shootout goals against Iceland. This means West and only West has both his voice and likeness (albeit masked) in the teaser. Because West and only West had the pleasure of performing in both of Disney’s full-length films about international hockey.

That also makes him an authority for establishing the comparisons and contrasts between each project. Both, he says, are important to keep in mind, especially when it comes to comparing the experience of making each.

 

“(It would be) interesting to somehow bring those two films together, maybe not,” he said. “They’re both hockey films, they’re both very special. But the stories are so different, they each kind of stand on their own.”

“There’s no way to compare those two experiences,” he added. “They’re very special experiences in their own way.”

A decade after the Pond, a smaller arena in Vancouver posed as the Lake Placid rink and served as a whole new playground for the twentysomething West and company. For the U.S.-Russia game that spawned the movie’s title, the Canadian crowd was more out of its element than anyone.

Of the big D2 shoot in 1993, Len Hall reported in the Los Angeles Times, “The crowd, many of whom had seen the first movie, needed little prompting to start the "U.S.A., U.S.A." chant.” (This is to say nothing of the more audible “We Will Quack You!” segment.)

Getting the audience in British Columbia to do the same was a more important prerequisite for Miracle. But as West remembers it, the crew had to yank the bystanders’ nationalistic fangs.

This was a place where the presence of a red maple leaf more than matched that of the Mighty Ducks’ crest around Anaheim. Even pretending to root for the rival to the south was an apparent affront.

“Imagine,” West said, “putting them in this arena and then telling them to chant ‘U-S-A.’ That combination was unreal, because they wouldn’t do it.”

At first, O’Connor openly pleaded through a megaphone to no avail. But two bystanders had the cure. They unfurled a strikingly large Canadian flag and draped it from the upper seating bowl.

That elicited the thundering din the filmmakers needed. And the locals eventually started to play along and act like they bled blue in addition to their natural red and white. The chant came late, but better late than never.

“(Both) unique moments in time for me,” West said, “and things I have great stories from.”

Loving life with Leigh

The Nathan West of the ’10s is East of Eli, singer and guitarist, at least professionally. Personally, he is Nathan West, devoted husband and doting father. His son, Noah, was on the way when Miracle was in the works. Now Noah is almost as old as Nathan was at the tournament that led him to D2.

Meanwhile, West’s youngest daughter, eight-year-old Anniston Kae, is taking up hockey this season. “So it’s still a huge part of my life,” he says.

Family business is somewhat bigger, though. With East of Eli, West and Leigh have more control over their opportunities to creatively collaborate. Sometimes known as WestLeigh, they have warmed North American and European audiences through 2015’s “Love Lit The Sky” and 2017’s “Nowhere.” Their duets, and East of Eli’s recent work in general, are expressly about appreciating one another and the family they have formed.

At times, when performing, West’s facial hair, shirt and hat make him look like an American Aldous Snow impersonator. He is anything but that, and WestLeigh is anything but the building-up-letting-down power couples people are accustomed to following. They stay out of the tabloids the same way start-to-finish smooth flights stay off the national news.

Of the concept of “Nowhere,” West told People magazine, “There’s a lot of times right now with our careers where there’s a lot missed opportunities to be together…that’s what I was thinking about. While I was thinking of her she was thinking of me. It’s special because love knows no boundaries.”

In the same People interview, Leigh offered, “We thought this would be a great opportunity for us to not be working together playing somebody else, but working together being ourselves.”

The only ponds the resultant straight-from-the-heart melody evokes are the kinds that uneventfully ripple before an impeccable sun-and-shade ratio. But West remains unequivocally grateful for his shift on the artist formerly known as the Arrowhead Pond.

After all, it did, in effect, lead him to Leigh. And he can claim membership on one of the same all-time rosters as Ranford and Ken Dryden (both of Miracle). Ditto Chris Chelios, Cam Neely, Luc Robitaille and Wayne Gretzky, who all appeared in D2.

“This whole door opened kind of by accident, but man, Jack White had started it. Without that, I don’t know that I would have my three kids. Kind of funny to look at it from that perspective.” - Nathan West

“I’ve had a very unique hockey career,” West told Pucks and Rec. “I did get to be a pro hockey player…not as a professional athlete, but as an actor.”

Per his IMDB page, West has not logged an acting credit since 2010’s Alleged. But one year before that, he elicited his hockey background once more to land a guest spot on the puck-themed episode of Bones, “Fire in the Ice.” As it happened, Robitaille also cameoed in that episode as himself, just as he had done in D2.

Robitaille has appeared in two movies and on seven scripted TV shows, be they dramas, primetime sitcoms or even cartoons. The current president of the L.A. Kings typically goes no more than four years between entertainment spots.

In a way, that pattern could extend Robitaille’s status as “someone I always looked up to” in West’s playing days. As West was wrapping up his chat with Pucks and Rec, he supposed that another as-yet-unforeseen, but ultimately enticing hockey/acting project could always emerge.

He has a point. The speculation may never stop as to a potential D4 film. That is unless it actually happens, in which case it could pursue a two-time Disney veteran with ample rink knowledge.

Or perhaps in another couple of decades, the 1998 gold-medalist U.S. women’s Olympic team will be made into movie material. Or maybe the to-be-determined fate of the 2017-18 women’s national team will become film fodder. And maybe by then, the likes of Anniston Kae West will be in a prime position to portray a player.

Or maybe she will just have a fun, innocent youth playing career while Dad kicks back as a spectator. Even that could come with an intermission twirl at L.A.’s Staples Center or Anaheim’s Honda Center. At least in that scenario, Anniston’s father would handle her moment in the sun with an informed perspective.

Either way, it would be sound symmetry for Nathan West, who is where he is and has what he has because he manned the crease so deftly in the winter of 1993.

“This whole door opened kind of by accident, but man, Jack White had started it,” he said. “Without that, I don’t know that I would have my three kids. Kind of funny to look at it from that perspective.”

Mighty Ducks movie viewership: The rookie and the re-visitor

The first Mighty Ducks movie, if not the whole trilogy it begat, can pass as a Slap Shot for kids.

It takes a protagonist team of athletes of roughly the same age as the intended audience on an age-old Cinderella path. Along that road, it spawns a slew of you cannot get out of your head, but can certainly spread to your peers’ brain books.

But with the film’s silver anniversary comes a more visible reality that, for the youngest age groups, viewership is not necessarily automatic, even for budding hockey enthusiasts. Unlike Slap Shot, where a first-time screening can be like a curious youngster’s first beer, the 1992 Disney film may not be passed down as easily.

Case in point: Pucks and Recreation boasts one correspondent who admitted to never having seen the movie. To rectify that in a fun, productive way, he belatedly broke that ice while a colleague who grew up on the film rewatched it after a protracted hiatus.

Both viewers’ assessments yielded ample encouragement for Ducks devotees who hope their childhood staple cements its place in the collective peewee pucksters’ entertainment library.

Ceremonial faceoff: Enlightening exposure

Eugene Helfrick: Growing up in Florida means a sport like hockey was never on the radar as a kid. Sure, you knew about the sport and would watch it on occasion. But in general, hockey was that “other” sport that existed on that magical surface known as ice that you only saw in cubed form.

Due to this lack of knowledge of the sport, I never saw The Mighty Ducks in theaters or on VHS. Somehow, well into adulthood and hockey fandom, I still never saw the movie that popularized so many tropes about the sport.

My question going in: Does the film hold up after 25 years, or is nostalgia its only hope for long-term appeal?

Zach Green: Conversely, I grew up outside of Philadelphia, one of the most hockey-crazed cities in the world. I am a little too young to have been able to see any of the Mighty Ducks movies in theaters, but was just the right age to watch them whenever they were on TV.

When my friends and I would play street hockey, oftentimes, one team would be the Flyers and the other would be the Ducks. It went so far that one of my friends had a Mighty Ducks mask that whoever was playing goalie would wear. 

With Eugene seeing The Mighty Ducks for the first time, this was the perfect opportunity for me to watch it again as someone who views it with nostalgia, and to get my feelings as to how the movie has held up.

First period: How the film holds up with millennials this day and age

Eugene: To start off, the film is very watchable. This may sound like weird praise, but there are many sports movies released in the ’90s (especially ones made by Disney) that are simply unwatchable today.

Obviously this is a film made for children and young adults, so much of the humor falls on deaf ears. And sure, the plot is one giant cliché, but it works. It helps that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, with everyone on board with the fact that they are in a Disney sports movie.

In fact, The Mighty Ducks doesn’t feel like a Disney film, which also helps its appeal. It is firmly entrenched in the ’90s, allowing for scenes that would never happen in a Disney film today. Just look at how, within the first 10 minutes, the lead character is shown drinking and driving, smart-mouthing a cop and swearing.

Even the kids get on with this theme, openly swearing and making mildly racist remarks in a Disney film. While it does fit with the era, it also comes off as very forced at times when you can tell that the kids are supposed to be nothing more than attitude.

Zach: I completely agree about how watchable it is. Children’s movies in general get tougher to watch as you get older, but not The Mighty Ducks. It stands the test of time, which is something that very few movies do, and is a film that I will be showing my future children. It was super-entertaining to me as a kid, and still is today.

While yes, this is a kids’ movie that does toe the line on appropriateness, it isn’t unheard of from Disney. I agree that some scenes wouldn’t fly today, but Disney has more recently made some PG-13 movies like that aren’t in the studio’s classic mold. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise comes to mind.

This is where I feel The Mighty Ducks fits in. I agree with Eugene as well when he says that it is helped by the fact that it doesn’t feel like a normal Disney movie. Otherwise, I might not be able to enjoy it as much as I still do.

Second period: The quality of the hockey scenes

Eugene: I did appreciate how authentic the actual hockey looked onscreen. This was supposed to be a peewee league, and it actually looked like a bunch of unstable kids on the ice. Players were constantly falling and skating slowly, which gave the film a little more realism in the one area where realism matters.

Zach: This was such a crucial detail that Disney got just right. They could have cast some elite hockey players for the roles, but didn’t.

Another observation I made was that the ice they played on wasn’t perfect either. Had it looked like they brought out the Zamboni before every shot, it may have been noticeable and brought me back to a reality that wasn’t real.

Third period: The quality of the humor

Eugene: The few moments that made me laugh out loud weren’t related to the film at all, just some retrospective thoughts.

Chief among them, the two NHL teams that were briefly shown in the film — the Minnesota North Stars and the Hartford Whalers — don’t exist anymore. Yet the franchise spawned by the film will be celebrating their 25th anniversary next year. Times change fast when it comes to sports franchises.

Zach: I still love the jokes in the movie. “Cake eater” is my favorite hockey insult ever, and absolves this movie of all poor attempts at humor.

In addition, I am a sucker for cheesy jokes, of which there are plenty. I now see the comedic irony of the teams featured, but didn’t ever think of that as a kid. 

Overtime: Conclusion

Eugene: In all, The Mighty Ducks is worth watching, if for no other reason than to understand some of the quotes the movie spawned. Everyone knows the Flying V and the “Quack” chant, so having the context to those jokes is nice after so many years.

The movie itself holds up well, and is fun enough to keep it as one of those classics that stay around for another 25 years.

Zach: I still love this movie, and now am going to go watch the other two. Surprising as it may be, some things never change, as evidenced by how similar our observations are on this movie.

It is a must watch for any hockey fan, regardless of age, if only to learn the jokes from the movie that have become commonplace in hockey-related conversations.