Grinch Mode: Pointing out the tactical errors in Christmas hockey movies

Aside from covering sports, going to movies is my true passion and there’s no better time of year to catch up with some good films in good company. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? It is! We’re in the infancy of awards season and I’m personally looking forward to catching The Brutalist, Juror No. 2 and A Complete Unknown — Timothee Chalamet’s stint on College GameDay did the trick and we’re going to the cinema!

Unfortunately, this piece highlights some of the worst intersections of cinema and sport: that’s right, we’re talking about Christmas movies with hockey in them! I did some light research, stumbling upon a few titles, before being forced to tap out. There’s only so many Hallmark tropes you can take.

What’s particularly annoying about this subset is how little attention or care are given to the hockey scenes. There are exceptions, but I’ve been told the Mighty Ducks series doesn’t count as a Christmas series, and the famed ‘Flying V’ formation has long been debunked as an instant way to create an opposing odd-man rush. Here’s what we thought of the hockey scenes in three Christmas hockey movies, before giving up on the venture entirely.

Jack Frost (1998)

Jack Frost is a pretty watchable Christmas movie, despite its fantastical premise. Michael Keaton plays a negligent father named Jack Frost, whose band is about to get their big break. He’s promised his sports-obsessed son, Charlie, that he’ll attend one of his hockey games soon, after spending so much time on the road. More to the point, Jack promises Charlie he’ll teach him the “J-shot” — which is just a wrist shot with an extended curl and drag release. It’s a pretty empty promise, but Charlie buys into it, this will surely be the time that his dad shows up, and perhaps that will inspire him to score his elusive first goal.

As luck would have it, Jack’s big break comes on Christmas Eve, after promising Charlie he’d spend some time with the family after all and teach him the J-shot. Jack changes his mind after a staged conversation with his bandmate and turns the car around, but road fatigue is real and he dies in a car accident. Pretty grim stuff all around.

Jack becomes reincarnated as a snowman, perhaps as karma for his misgivings in his actual life. The plot picks up when Jack starts interacting with Charlie, who is too young to be hallucinating, and they form a friendship borne out of loneliness, cynicism and a common good. Jack teaches Charlie the J-shot once the young man lets his guard down — not an easy thing to do, to be sure — on an outdoor pond.

And here’s the thing: Charlie is supposed to be some hopeless house leaguer, looking for his first goal. Jack really must’ve been a legendary coach, because all of Charlie’s flaws are fixed by the next game. He scores two goals off the rush, using the J-shot once, while picking off his opponent — his schoolyard bully with some Selke-level defence and tracking back. Did Jack teach him the core responsibilities of F3 during their one training session? How does he go from a sub-par skater to the fastest dude on the ice? They say development is non-linear, but I’m not buying it.

Merry Kiss Cam (2022)

This film is straight up bizarre as it incorporates a real-life hockey team in the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs, but treats the hockey culture surrounding a perennial NCAA power as a complete joke.

Jess Woods is a struggling artist, who has to deal with the pretensions of Duluth’s art scene. Every person she interacts with in a gallery is rocking knockoff Anna Wintour shades and frankly, it’s impossible to believe any of this motel art would constitute a professional exhibition. Danny Carmody Jr. is a kind-hearted bar owner where everybody knows his name, sharing his obsession with the Bulldogs.

One night, Jess comes into the bar and hits it off with Danny, although that’s a stretch entirely. This script seems like it was written by AI, it lacks any human connection and it’s hard to believe that any two reasonable adults would want to see each other again after such stilted dialogue, but the heart wants what it wants. Danny, a grown man in his late 30s fully admits that he doesn’t know what a ‘DM’ is, but he composes himself to ask Jess out to a Bulldogs game for a first date. It’s not a bad idea!

At the game, Danny quizzes Jess on routine hockey items, giving her a multiple-choice test about what a zamboni is. Jess isn’t putoff by Danny’s antics and they get on the kiss cam, with 40 seconds left in a tie game. Of course, a Bulldogs defenceman goes on an end-to-end rush, splitting a pair of apathetic defenders, before tucking it home as the clock expires. Any NCAA coach would lose their mind at this type of negligence!

Most of the hockey itself starts off OK, but then it gets outright lazy. You can see a good breakout pass in the opening hockey scene, but during the winning streak, the hockey scenes get worse. It basically boils down to lazy production: virtually all of the goals are scored off the rush, inside the left faceoff circle, while the defence effectively gives up. They only show one zone at a time, with five skaters, perhaps skimping on the budget, but it only shows the direct sequence leading up to the goal. As the movie goes on, every goal is the same: a forward will rip through the left faceoff circle and then beat the goalie on a bad angle near the faceoff dot. They barely change this up, until the climactic hockey scene, where the Bulldogs convert on a routine 2-on-1, with a lateral pass across the net-front for the winner.

The dialogue is awful, the romance scenes barely hold up, but the movie does show a real allegiance to the Bulldogs. I can’t help but wonder if the fans of the Bulldogs, along with Duluth residents are insulted by this mockery of their culture, or if they see it as a tribute. I’m guessing it’s a mix of both?

Christmas on Ice (2020)

OK, so I was misled by the description and this one isn’t a Christmas hockey movie in the traditional sense, although if you’ve read this far, traditional sensibilities often do not apply here. Noah Tremblay plays a former NHL hockey player, who runs the thriving iceplex in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tremblay is a single father, and his daughter takes skating classes at the underfunded public rink called The Oval, which is run by Courtney Bennett, a former professional figure skater who is getting their master’s degree in education at night.

Courtney and Noah hit it off, after Noah’s daughter Grace loves her skating lessons. There’s just one major problem: the Mayor is threatening to shut down the public arena as it bleeds money as a ‘negative line item’ while Noah’s hockey fourplex is seeing a vital part of the city’s economic boom and growth plan. This movie fundamentally doesn’t understand how public subsidies or city budgets work and like Merry Kiss Cam, we’re subject to another stilted romance where a dead spouse is involved. It’s pretty grim. But we have to give Courtney some credit for delivering this line about Noah: “I don’t care if he’s Patrice Bergeron, I’ve got stuff to do!”

As for the hockey: the one scene of the youth hockey development centre looks pretty normal! Here’s my issue: Noah goes skating with Courtney and even if he did suffer a torn ACL, there’s simply no way this dude played professional hockey. He can barely skate, he stands upright — and it’s not as if he’s powering through the zone with his torso like Jack Eichel, the dude simply has no bend in his stance at all. They couldn’t have asked for an actor who can passably skate? Is this too much to ask?