Old-time hockey, flying V's, and one miracle on ice. Here's the definitive list, and yes, we'll fight you over the order.
Hockey doesn't get as many movies as football or baseball. But the ones it gets are great: foul-mouthed, violent, sentimental, and endlessly quotable. Locker rooms still quote these films word for word. They made a lot of people hockey fans before they ever saw a real game.
This is our ranking of the best hockey movies ever made, from minor-league chaos to Olympic gold.
1. Slap Shot (1977)
Directed by George Roy Hill. Starring Paul Newman.
The greatest hockey movie ever made, and it's not close.
Paul Newman plays Reggie Dunlop, the aging player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a broke minor-league team in a dying mill town. The team is losing, the town is losing, and then the Hanson Brothers show up: three bespectacled goons with foil on their knuckles who turn every game into a brawl. And the fans love it.
Screenwriter Nancy Dowd based it on her brother Ned's time with the Johnstown Jets, and much of it was shot in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The Hanson Brothers were based on the real Carlson brothers. Jeff and Steve Carlson played themselves, and Dave Hanson filled in for Jack Carlson, who got called up to the pros before filming. Ned Dowd even shows up as the legendary goon Ogie Oglethorpe.
It's crude, it's hilarious, and it's still the most honest picture of minor-league hockey ever filmed. "Old-time hockey" became part of the sport's language because of it.
Best line: "I'm listening to the f***in' song!" (Just kidding. Everyone picks "Old-time hockey! Eddie Shore!")
2. Miracle (2004)
Directed by Gavin O'Connor. Starring Kurt Russell.
The best hockey drama ever made. Kurt Russell plays Herb Brooks, the stubborn, brilliant coach who turned a group of American college kids into the team that beat the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, then beat Finland for gold.
What makes Miracle work is how real the hockey looks. The filmmakers cast real hockey players instead of actors who could kind of skate, so the game scenes feel like actual hockey. The film also uses Al Michaels' original call, so you hear the real "Do you believe in miracles? YES!"
Herb Brooks died in a car accident in August 2003, before the film came out. It's dedicated to him. Russell's "Great moments are born from great opportunity" locker-room speech still gets played in real locker rooms.
Best line: "Again." (If you've played hockey, you've lived this scene.)
3. Goon (2011)
Directed by Michael Dowse. Starring Seann William Scott.
The best hockey movie of the 21st century. Seann William Scott plays Doug Glatt, a sweet, dim bar bouncer who can't skate but can take a punch and throw one. He becomes the enforcer for the Halifax Highlanders and heads for a showdown with the league's most feared tough guy, Ross "The Boss" Rhea, played perfectly by Liev Schreiber.
Written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg and based on the memoir of real minor-league enforcer Doug Smith, Goon is as violent and filthy as Slap Shot. But it has a big heart. It's a real love letter to the enforcer role at the exact moment the sport was moving away from it.
The diner scene between Glatt and Rhea is one of the best two-person scenes in any sports movie. A sequel, Goon: Last of the Enforcers, came out in 2017.
Best line: "I'm Doug. I'm a nice guy." (Then he isn't.)
4. The Mighty Ducks (1992)
Directed by Stephen Herek. Starring Emilio Estevez.
Probably no movie has made more kids hockey fans. Emilio Estevez plays Gordon Bombay, a hotshot lawyer sentenced to community service coaching District 5, the worst peewee team in Minnesota. They become the Ducks. They learn the Flying V. A generation of kids went out and bought sticks.
The movie was so big that Disney started an actual NHL team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, which played its first season in 1993. That's how much reach this movie had.
The sequels, D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) and D3 (1996), kept it going, and Disney+ revived the series in 2021 with Game Changers. Charlie Conway, Fulton Reed's slap shot, the Bash Brothers, Goldberg in net. If you were a kid in the 90s, you knew every one of them.
Best line: "Ducks fly together!" (Quack. Quack. Quack.)
5. Mystery, Alaska (1999)
Directed by Jay Roach. Starring Russell Crowe.
The most underrated hockey movie on this list. A tiny frozen town in Alaska plays pond hockey every Saturday, and they're good. Then a magazine story gets them an exhibition game against the New York Rangers, on their own pond.
Russell Crowe plays the town sheriff and veteran captain, Burt Reynolds plays the judge, and Mike Myers steals scenes as the TV announcer. Written by David E. Kelley, it's about a small town whose whole identity is a frozen pond, and what happens when the outside world shows up.
If you grew up playing outdoors, this one hits different.
6. Youngblood (1986)
Directed by Peter Markle. Starring Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze.
Peak 80s. Rob Lowe plays Dean Youngblood, a farm kid with elite skill who joins a junior team, the Hamilton Mustangs, and has to learn to fight to survive. Patrick Swayze plays the veteran captain who takes him under his wing.
Bonus: a very young Keanu Reeves shows up as the team's French-Canadian goalie. It's cheesy, it's dramatic, the soundtrack is pure 1986, and the final fight is fantastic. A cult classic for a reason.
7. Red Army (2014)
Directed by Gabe Polsky. Documentary.
The best hockey documentary ever made. Red Army tells the story of the Soviet national team, the greatest hockey machine ever assembled, through Slava Fetisov, its legendary captain. It's about hockey, but it's also about the Cold War, state control, defection, and what it costs to be a national symbol.
If you liked Miracle, watch this next. It's the same rivalry from the other side, and it'll change how you see 1980.
8. The Rocket (2005)
Directed by Charles Binamé. Starring Roy Dupuis.
The story of Maurice "Rocket" Richard, the Canadiens legend who became a symbol for French Canada. It follows his rise, his fights with the league, and the suspension that sparked the 1955 Richard Riot in Montreal. Roy Dupuis is excellent as Richard, all quiet fury.
It's the most serious film on this list, and the best look at how much hockey can mean to a culture.
9. Les Boys (1997)
Directed by Louis Saïa.
You may not have heard of it outside Quebec, but in Quebec it's a phenomenon. Les Boys follows a beer-league team of lovable misfits who have to win a game to save their bar owner's business. It was one of the biggest box-office hits in Quebec history and spawned multiple sequels.
It's the best movie ever made about beer-league hockey, which is the hockey most of us actually play.
10. Indian Horse (2017)
Directed by Stephen Campanelli.
Based on Richard Wagamese's acclaimed novel, Indian Horse follows Saul Indian Horse, an Ojibwe boy taken to a residential school in Canada who finds escape and real talent on the ice, then has to face racism in the game and the trauma he carries.
It's not an easy watch. It is an important one, and one of the most powerful films ever made about hockey and the people it has and hasn't welcomed.
Honorable Mentions
- Sudden Death (1995): Jean-Claude Van Damme saves the vice president during Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. He fights a guy in a penguin mascot suit. It's ridiculous, and it's perfect.
- The Cutting Edge (1992): A washed-up hockey player becomes a figure skater. "Toe pick!" lives forever.
- Happy Gilmore (1996): Technically a golf movie, but it's about a hockey player who can't skate and fights everyone. That counts.
- D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994): Team USA, Iceland, the knucklepuck. Some people say it's better than the original, and they're not wrong.
The Takeaway
The best hockey movies get the same things right: the locker room, the bus rides, the guys who bleed for a team nobody else cares about. Whether it's the Chiefs, the Ducks, or a pond in Alaska, they're about belonging to something.
That's also what Odd Man Rush is about. If Slap Shot is your favorite, check out Finesse Over Fist, our 70s kung fu poster tribute to the 1976 Cup Final, the series that ended goon hockey one year before Slap Shot made it famous. And for fans of the brawls, The Good Friday Massacre and Fight Night at the Joe are waiting.
Original artwork, hand-pressed one shirt at a time.
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Odd Man Rush is not affiliated with, licensed by, or endorsed by the National Hockey League, any team, or any film studio. Film titles are referenced for editorial purposes only.