The most notable movies and TV shows featuring hockey

Okay, we’ll just start here. “Heated Rivalry” became an outright phenomenon, and so we shall tip our hat to that. Is it coherent in terms of the hockey or the romance? Not necessarily? Is it based on a slapped-together series of romance novels? Naturally. It’s also as popular as the NHL and brought the NHL more fans, and we can’t argue with that.

“Slap Shot” is, indeed, a raunchy sports comedy, but it’s honestly more than that. If that were all that director George Roy Hill wanted to do, he wouldn’t have cast Paul Newman in the lead role. Also, plenty of credit for making this film more than that goes to screenwriter Nancy Dowd, who based it in part on her brother’s experience playing minor-league hockey. “Slap Shot” is about economic despair, struggling Rust Belt towns, violence, sex, and, yes, also hockey. It’s genuinely a great movie that happens to be a hockey-centric comedy.

“The Mighty Ducks” is…not a great movie, but it is a breezy, family-friendly hockey-centric comedy. In the ‘90s, the film definitely helped boost kids' interest in the sport. We’re not going to lean too heavily on nostalgia or claim real quality in the storytelling, but “The Mighty Ducks” remains watchable for adults sharing it with kids who might actually enjoy it. The first sequel is more fun if less good, and the third one is neither fun nor good.

“The Mighty Ducks” got its legacy sequel as a TV show in the 2020s. The show had an interesting hook: the Ducks are now essentially the Hawks from the first film, and a new, scrappy team of underdogs is put together. The show had Lauren Graham and the returning Emilio Estevez as Gordon Bombay. “Game Changers” was canceled after two seasons, then purged from Disney+ for craven, artless business reasons.

Rob Lowe plays a hockey player named Dean Youngblood in an '80s sports movie that also has Patrick Swayze. Yes, there is ‘80s hockey hair to be found. It’s a middling movie, but it is a nice time capsule, and it has a lot of hockey. “Youngblood” was remade in 2025, but that was news to us as well, so don’t worry about it.

Okay, now here is the most-accurate movie featuring hockey ever made. Some terrorists take, well, the entire Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals hostage, with the vice president among those in the arena. Jean-Claude Van Damme fights a terrorist hiding in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ mascot costume and briefly plays goalie for the Penguins. In Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Yep, that all tracks!

As a hockey movie, “Miracle” is about as good as it gets. Part of that is the fact that it is based on a real event, one that was remarkable enough not to be juiced up in that sports movie way. Nobody is winning this one on a last-second penalty shot. On top of that, though, the production focused on hiring hockey players who could act, and a few actors who could play hockey, so that the action in “Miracle” could feel like an actual hockey game. Maybe that’s the true miracle.

There were a couple of occasions in real life when a hockey team from a remote town got to face an NHL club. For example, in 1905, a team from Dawson City, Alaska, got to face the Ottawa Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup…and lost games 9-2 and 23-2. That would have been an interesting way for “Mystery, Alaska,” a so-so sports comedy, to go. Instead, it’s a bit more romanticized, but not without its charms.

Yes, “Inside Out 2” is about emotions. Also, it makes a lot of money for Disney, at times seemingly more than the former. However, our human protagonist Riley is also playing on a hockey team, and so there’s a lot of hockey action in the film as well. Given that the movie made over $1.5 billion, it’s easy to call it the most successful hockey movie ever made.

Fighting has become less a part of hockey, and as such, enforcers (or goons, in the parlance of this film) are effectively gone from the game. “Goon” is a comedic, but not silly, look at that role in the game. Seann William Scott plays a bouncer who falls into the role of enforcer for a local minor league team. It became an after-the-fact success and cult film thanks, in part, to Netflix, and there was even a sequel made in 2017 as a result.

This is a movie about a chimpanzee playing hockey. They got to it before Air Bud could play hockey, and to the best of our knowledge, Air Bud never did. Jack the chimp did, though. Then, in later sequels, he skateboarded and snowboarded.

This is one of the earlier hockey movies, harkening back to the days of the Original Six in the NHL. Not that actual NHL teams or players are relevant to this film. “White Lightning” is, perhaps confusingly, about a hockey team called the Red Devils. It’s a by-the-numbers sports movie from a journeyman director without any notable names in the cast. We did want to shout out one of the rare hockey movies not released in the last 50 years, though.

Mike Myers managed to do well in his tenure as a film star with “The Love Guru.” Based on the quality of this movie, that was a fair outcome. This is a horrendous movie featuring Myers’ worst impulses on display. He produced, co-wrote, and starred in it, and he couldn’t even get his buddy Jay Roach to agree to direct this train wreck. Anyway, the Toronto Maple Leafs are prominently involved in the plot of this film, and may their Stanley Cup drought never end for agreeing to be a part of “The Love Guru.”

Hey, just because Happy Gilmore becomes a successful golfer doesn’t mean this isn’t a movie featuring hockey. Happy is, after all, a hockey player turned golfer. His hockey sensibilities carry over to the golf course. That is what makes him such a humorous juxtaposition to the rest of the PGA! “Happy Gilmore” is the best Adam Sandler comedy, though, and it makes for both a good hockey and a good golf movie.

A spinoff of the popular (in Canada, and cultishly in the United States) “Letterkenny,” “Shoresy” is oh-so Canadian. The titular Shoresy, a mononymous character who is a broad hockey player stereotype, leaves Letterkenny behind for Sudbury, Ontario, to take over a struggling hockey team. Somehow “Shoresy” has lasted for six seasons (and counting?), though Canada is akin to Britain in that each season is only six episodes. Fans of hockey do tend to enjoy the show, though.

No, this show has nothing to do with the movie series. It only kind of has anything to do with the hockey team, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, now just the Anaheim Ducks. No, this is a show, naturally, about anthropomorphic ducks that come from Puckworld and consider hockey a way of life. Are they also kind of superheroes? Perhaps it is not surprising that this show only lasted one season.

This is a more obscure Canadian sitcom about hockey. “Rent-a-Goalie” aired three seasons in the 2000s, but it often got love from the Gemini Awards, Canada’s equivalent to the Emmys. The show is focused on a former addict who loves hockey and now runs a goalie rental service out of a coffee shop in Toronto. If you have ever played hockey, you fully understand the predicament of trying to find goalies for a game.

Yes, “Lisa on Ice” is one episode of “The Simpsons,” a show largely not about hockey. However, “The Simpsons” is also one of the most popular shows ever; “Lisa on Ice” is a great episode, and for a lot of people, this is probably the quintessential bit of hockey-related pop culture. As such, we wanted to include it. Bart and Lisa become hockey rivals. Hilarity ensues, but then so does sweetness. If we were to pick just one hockey-related bit of entertainment to watch, it just might be “Lisa on Ice.”