Now this is a real old-time hockey hat trick, better even than a Gordie Howe Hat Trick (a goal, an assist and a fight): Reg Dunlop is hockey's MVP every season, coach of the year every year and No. 1 star every night.
Toss your caps on the ice in honor of Dunlop, and offer a sad, sweet moment of silence for Paul Newman, the actor who portrayed the player/coach of the Charlestown Chiefs in Slap Shot, the greatest sports movie ever made.
Hockey always will be in debt to the actor who died Saturday of cancer. Fully mindful of Newman's long, distinguished Hollywood career and his overwhelming charity work (the salad dressing and other products that bear his name are said to have raised more than a quarter-billion dollars), hockey lovers will remember his one role in 1977. To them, he always will be the coach who put a bounty on an opponent's head and the player who stormed the organist's booth --- in skates and full uniform -- to demand, "Never play `Lady of Spain' again!"
"I wonder if Paul Newman knew this or if his family knows this," Islanders captain Bill Guerin said Monday. "Every hockey player loves Paul Newman because he's Reg Dunlop.
"You always hear that it got terrible reviews in 1977, but if they could do it again, it would get two thumbs-up. It's for sure the best hockey movie ever made, that goes without saying, and it is the funniest sports movie ever made," Guerin said. "It's equal will never be made. Never."
Legend has it that Newman had a particular warm spot in his heart for Dunlop, more than he had for many of his other characters. He once admitted to Time magazine that his vocabulary off-screen became much more Reg-like after Slap Shot, the guy had such an impact on him.
Dunlop, the creation of scriptwriter Nancy Dowd, whose brother Ned played for the Johnstown Jets, still is the favorite coach and player of just about everybody involved with hockey.
On the surface, Slap Shot isn't the most flattering look at the sport. It seems to skewer the brawling and no-holds barred approach that runs through hockey's family tree. But hockey players, coaches, managers and fans love it. I've always believed it says something about all of those people because they are secure enough to have a sense of humor.
Go in any hockey locker room anywhere, and probably in the stands at any rink, and somebody will know what you're talking about when you mention the Hanson brothers or Ogie Ogilthorpe or if you ask, as Dunlop's French-speaking goalie Denis Lemieux did, "Who own de Chiefs?"
It's all because of the way Newman pulled it off. Slap Shot still will be a hit 30 years from now. People still will be able to identify the sights of Johnstown, Pa., which became the fictional "Charlestown" on screen.
"I had the benefit of sitting in Reg Dunlop's seat when I played in Johnstown," Islanders coach Scott Gordon said, adding that he loves the movie. "To me, it's a pretty good caricature of the stuff that did go on before the East Coast League became the East Coast League."
Gordon said that the Morley family's dog statue -- identified by Newman's character as a tribute to the dog that saved the town from a flood -- is still there, and so is the diner in which the Charlestown Chiefs ate.
Slap Shot especially hits home on Long Island in that Dunlop is said to have been based on John Brophy, player/coach of the Long Island Ducks. The Ducks are mentioned in the film and a center for an opponent is named Brophy.
The real Brophy once told me he never did meet Newman, but added, "They did a lot of research on me."
Dave Hanson, a former minor leaguer who later was the general manager of the Islanders affiliate in Albany, had one of the key roles in Slap Shot. In an interview with this reporter some years back, he recalled taking his pregame nap one day in his Johnstown hotel when Newman knocked on his door to invite him to a screen test.
That led to him being one of the Hanson brothers, the three bespectacled, long-haired, forwards whose play could gently be called "intense." The parts were supposed to go to his teammates, three Carlson brothers, but one of them had just been called up by the Edmonton Oilers, then of the World Hockey Association.
Hanson fit right in, not lacking for authenticity. He actually played with Bill Goldthorpe, who inspired the villainous Syracuse goon Ogilthorpe (played on screen by Ned Dowd). When it was suggested to Hanson that what made the movie so much fun is that it bent reality, he said, "Well, it was a satire. But if you asked me if it was closer to fiction or fact, I'd say it was closer to fact."
Fact is, Newman ought to have his Chiefs jersey retired in every pro rink, with a "C" on it for what he did in that B movie.
Brophy once gave me this review: "Funny as hell. Probably the best movie ever made of any sport."
And don't make the mistake of thinking Slap Shot is too wild to believe. As John Muckler, Brophy's general manager with the Ducks, once assured this reporter, "We could add to that movie, believe me."
