‘Goon’ Gets It

Nearly 35 years have passed since Slap Shot cursed, clipped and caroused its way into the hearts of movie-watching hockey fans. Many puck-related flicks have since tried to replicate that perfect blend of heart and humor, but most – including MVP: Most Valuable Primate, which sold the sport via, yes, monkeys on skates, and Score: A Hockey Musical, which we won’t dignify by mentioning any further – are full-on abominations. However, the new movie Goon, starring Seann William Scott (American Pie, Dude, Where’s My Car?), Liev Schreiber (Scream and narrator of the NHL’s 24/7 HBO series) and Jay Baruchel (Million Dollar Baby, Tropic Thunder) deserves no game misconduct for sucking the joy and reality from the sport in some cutesy Hollywood manner. In fact, Goon is a profane, pumped-up, playful punch-out…

Gut-Busting Goalie

Once a week, the Penguins end practice with a shootout and their franchise goalie always makes it interesting. This is not to suggest Marc-Andre Fleury loses. He usually triumphs, but unlike in games, he does so by confounding shooters with his pre-shot antics. A jumping jack here, a pushup there, a spin-o-rama every so often, this is Fleury unmasked even while he’s wearing one. He keeps the Penguins – for whom he is the second-longest tenured member after Brooks Orpik – loose. “That’s my other job,” he said. “First job: Stop pucks. Second job: Keep the guys laughing.” Fleury, 27 and, according to teammates, the Penguins’ most indispensable player, has matured since Pittsburgh drafted him first overall in 2003, when he was shy and uncomfortable with his second language, English. Today he’s…

‘The Professor’ A True Original

Ron Caron made it to 82 before he died in mid-January, amazing considering the blood vessels threatened in his through every game his Habs and Blues played. “He’s Keenan’s sonnn!” ‘The Professor,’ his face redder than the ink in the Blues’ ledgers, screamed about David Manson during a St. Louis-Chicago series, “Arrest him! He should be in jailll!” For two-and-half hours, 82 games a year, plus playoffs, Caron should have been in an asylum. Officials were “prostitutes,” and what he said of an opposition diver known to have married a stripper was far worse. Caron railed from press boxes in a Gallic siren that fluctuated between high and higher, Latin following guttural, spoken in a rumba cadence. He once kicked a hole in the wall of Chicago Stadium press box. In Detroit’s,…

The Instigator