With Paul Newman's passing, Canadians and hockey fans lift their glasses for Reg Dunlop.
"There's a hangover from characters sometimes. There are things that stick. Since 'Slap Shot,' my language is right out of the locker room." -- Paul Newman (1925-2008)
"Hey Hanrahan she's a dyke! I know, I know! She's a lesbian, a lesbian, a lesbian!"
While the rest of the world mourns the passing of Paul Newman, there is only one country where people will also bring their glasses together in tribute to Reg Dunlop, player-coach of the Chiefs.
"Get that lumber in his teeth. Let 'em know you're there!"
That place is Canada, where they taught us about "Cool Hand Luke" in our high school film studies classes, but we all had far more success in memorizing lines from the "Slap Shot" script, a movie that perhaps no Canadian male over the age of 20 can say he has not seen at last once.
And if you ever rode a bus with a junior or college hockey team, it is ingrained in your mind from multiple viewings.
"I don't think there is a hockey player out there who has not seen 'Slap Shot,'" Anaheim defenceman Chris Pronger said Sunday morning. "You know who the Hanson brothers are. You know Paul Newman is Reg Dunlop. You knew the storyline long before you ever got on that bus. Every ... single ... line.
"'Dave's a killer.' 'Dave's a mess.' The Hanson Brothers, 'brought their (bleepin') toys with them!?!'" said Pronger, reciting some of the beloved lines. "You know everything all the way down the line, and you were still intrigued by it."
Let's face it: Newman did far, far more important work in his career than in that 1977 cult classic, where player-coach Reg Dunlop was loosely based on former Toronto Maple Leafs coach John Brophy's time with the old Long Island Ducks. There Brophy racked up 4,000 penalty minutes and was traded to and from the Ducks 13 times in total.
To the film world, "Slap Shot" was a throwaway. And in the thousands of obituaries produced over the past couple of days, there are few outside Canadian borders that ran, as the Edmonton Journal did on Sunday, front page art of Newman in his Chiefs sweater.
On Sportsnet.ca Sunday morning, the headline read: "Slap Shot actor Newman dead at 83." The ensuing wire story must have come from the United States, however. It didn't even mention "Slap Shot," instead dwelling on "fringe" works like "Hud" and "The Color of Money," two flicks in which Ogie Ogilthorpe or the Hanson Brothers are nowhere to be found.
The wonderful entertainment writer Lynn Smith penned nearly 4,000 words on Newman's life and career for Sunday's Los Angeles Times, but made only one passing reference to "Slap Shot" about three-quarters of the way though the piece.
No wonder L.A. is such a weak hockey market.
"For all of us in the hockey industry, he was Reg," said Mike Peca from Columbus. "In Canada, we remember him as Reg Dunlop. All the memories and the quotes from that movie still ring in NHL dressing rooms today."
Back in 1976, Sportsnet colour analyst John Garrett was tending goal in the World Hockey Association for the Minnesota Fighting Saints. His teammates were the Carlson brothers, two of whom -- Jeff and Steve -- ended up playing Hanson brothers in the movie. Another hockey player, David Hanson, played the third brother.
"They said that he was so down to earth," Garrett said of Newman. "He made them feel like one of the guys. He'd have beers with them after the day's shoot. They said he was so good, it made it easy for them to be themselves in front of the camera."
For Garrett, watching "Slap Shot" back in 1977 was like an out of body experience; like he was floating above a WHA dressing room, looking down on his own life.
"I lived 'Slap Shot,'" Garrett said. "Anyone who played on that Minnesota Fighting Saints team with those three Carlson brothers, the glasses and the whole bit. The three of them; sitting on the bench together, playing as a line. We'd watch that movie, and say, 'Oh God, I'm living that.'"
Garrett would play the next season for the Birmingham Bulls.
"In Birmingham we were idiots too. We had Bad News Bilodeau, Dave Hanson, Serge Beaudoin, Frank Beaton," he recalled. "The Winnipeg Jets, they were the Edmonton Oilers of the WHA. They could really play the game. They lost one game in the playoffs that year, and they lost it to us.
"In one game there was a big brawl and Dave Hanson pulled off Bobby Hull's toupee. He grabbed Bobby by the hair, Bobby ducked under, and Hanson is left standing there with his wig. It looked like he'd scalped him."
Had it happened a couple of years earlier, that incident may have made the movie. Then again, "Slap Shot" couldn't stand any improvement.
It stands today as the unbeaten champ of hockey movies, often replicated but never duplicated in over 30-plus years.
"None of the other movies ever got to the deepest parts the way 'Slap Shot' did, back when it was probably a lot like that in the deep minor league system," Pronger said. "It WAS a gong show back then, when they mixed a little hockey in with all the fighting. Guys were (drunk) when they played, (drunk) on the bus.
"'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?' 'Cool Hand Luke?' All those movies have made Paul Newman's career. But in Canada, it was 'Slap Shot' that gave him his icon status."
