I was frequently reminded of my favorite 'Sports Movies' while watching this Canadian Film, and how the best of them can move or excite or thrill despite the viewer's complete ignorance of the particular sport. I'm thinking of 'Breaking Away' (bicycle racing), or 'Hoosiers' (basketball), or 'Eight Men Out', 'The Rookie', 'The Natural' (baseball), 'Slap Shot' (hockey), 'Remember the Titans' (football), 'Rocky', 'Cinderella Man' or 'Body and Soul' (boxing) or even the recent 'Dodgeball'. All manage to engage the viewer in the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat regardless of whether you are a sports fan or not. There are times in this film that the filmmakers got close to the net, and a couple moments where they scored a goal, but they couldn't quite put together a hat trick with this one. The hockey action scenes were well filmed and edited, and gave a sense of excitement. I particularly enjoyed the scene where the notoriously violent New York player tries to 'get' our hero, but gets a surprising comeuppance. But the scenes never quite seemed to flow together enough to get the audience in a 'cheering' mood, but were just pockets of excitement here and there. I frequently found myself confused about what was going on. Perhaps this is one of those movies where you need to be familiar with the sport/sporting legend to fully appreciate it. The lead actor did a fine job, portraying the simple french canadian machinist/hockey star with a calm dignity and stubborn drive, and the 'fight for french canadian dignity' was effective and interesting. Roy Dupuis reminds me of a young Rock Hudson, or possibly Sam Raimi favorite Bruce Campbell. The whole 'family drama' angle kind of left me cold. I really wasn't overly interested in the 'brother in law who can't good tickets to the games' subplot, or the 'poor people fence' or the 'father in law who doesn't approve of the son-in-law' subplot (seems like they tried to squeeze too many subplots into the mix, and couldn't quite decide which one to emphasize or expand on, so all are given short shrift)..and the wife seemed almost an afterthought to the story (There is a scene where our hero goes all gushy over his newborn baby, but then we never see the kid again after that).. The actor who played the Montreal Canadiens coach was particularly good (and looks real familiar to me, I'll have to IMDB him to see where else I've seen him). Some of the camera work seemed a bit unnecessary, especially the sudden switches to washed out black and white for certain scenes (with no particular rhyme or reason that I could decipher). Could've been a condender, but left me a bit cold. A cut above most of the other 'Spout Mavens' discs I've received.