Ice hockey in popular culture

Films

Like all of the major sports, hockey plays a major part in American popular culture. Though it is the least popular of the four major professional sports in the US (American football, baseball, basketball, and hockey), a number of notable Hollywood films have been made about hockey. Notable hockey films include Slap Shot (1977), The Mighty Ducks (1992, successful enough to spawn two sequels and an NHL team named the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now the Anaheim Ducks), and Miracle (2004). The first two are fictional comedies; the last is a drama based on the true story of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" USA Olympic gold medal team. Other hockey films include Youngblood, Hockey Night, MVP: Most Valuable Primate, H-E Double Hockey Sticks, Mystery, Alaska, The Rocket: The Maurice Richard Story, The Sweater and the 1937 John Wayne film Idol of the Crowds . Many other films are less hockey-oriented but nonetheless prominently involve the sport. Both Happy Gilmore and The Cutting Edge centre around failed hockey players using their talents for other sports (golf and figure skating, respectively), while Wayne's World contains a number of prominent references to the sport during the film. The Jean-Claude Van Damme starrer Sudden Death (1995) is set and shot entirely in the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, the (supposed) stage for the seventh game of the NHL Stanley Cup finals. While National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was never a hockey movie, Chevy Chase's lead character, Clark Griswold, was famous for wearing a light Chicago Blackhawks jersey with "Griswold" and the numbers "00" on it during certain scenes. It also plays a part in Disney Channel original movies Go Figure and Genius, and romantic comedy Just Friends. In Quebec, the movie Les Boys is a cult classic for many hockey fans, enough to spawn three sequels. The fourth installment of Les Boys featured "Hockey Legends" such as Guy Lafleur, Pierre Bouchard, Martin Brodeur, Yvon Lambert and more. The movie Lucky Luch is based off a true person, Joe Michelucci, an aspiring professional hockey player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The movie shows his struggles through minor hockey and eventually makes the 1992 US national hockey team.