Slapshot: Not Just a Great Movie.

yes, slapshot is the greatest hockey movie of all time.... but it's also the name of the greatest board game of all time (or at least the best hockey-themed board game of all time)

as far as i knew only two copies of this game existed... one at uncle john's house, and one at uncle tom's house...  this game was the usual centerpiece to new years eve parties for those too young to do any serious partying... but a game i always tried to get people to play whenever i was in a house where the game was located.

billy bob shared my love of this game... unfortunately, he was absent many of the times i would try to get this game played... one of the reasons i was extra psyched when billy bob would show up on long island was that i knew a game of slapshot would make its way into our weekend at some point.

the game's brilliance was in its simplicity (aka, this was a kids game)... it was essentially a multi-player game of war, with slight twist and funny charters on the cards.  my obsession with the game only grew over the years, and was something i continued to try to get people to play through my highschool and into my college years... until the rejections were getting so frequent i just decided to steal the game and bring it to school with me... perhaps all it needed was a new audience.


i introduced the game to my roomates with a little trepidation.  the game was scoffed at so often, i was not sure how it would go over... little did i know slapshot was about to get taken to the next level.

too call it an instant hit would be an understatement. i can't possibly put a number on it, but it was played a lot.  its characters seeped into our vocabulary (boney maloney).... new phrases were born. the two that come to mind are 'foWARDS' and "lace up your tradin' shoes".

since i only stole the cards from my uncles house, i needed to re-create the board myself.  it was pretty simple set up. three of the squares are labeled for the three positions. goalies, defensemen and forwards... of course, like an idiot, i spelled it 'fowards'... (is it possible to have a typo while writing by hand?)... it went unnoticed for a couple of weeks.. but once it was noticed... it became the status quo to emphasize the misspelling, the 'wards' part of the word in particular.

the story behind  'lace up your tradin shoes' can be attributed to a roomate. to briefly recap the game play, every person has 6 cards at all times (three foWARDS, two defensemen and one goalie)

when its your turn to go, you can either draft a new player, play someone else in a head-to-head game, or make a trade with another team. drafting a new player is simply discarding one card, and picking a new one from the community cards.... a head to head game would involve a "war" like flip off. and a trade would involve randomly picking a card from one persons team, and exchanging it for a card from your team.

when you go head-to-head it's up to the person to arrange their cards strategically, if they feel like it.

the phrase "lace em up" would generally be the term used any time someone wanted to challenge someone to a head-to-head game.... as in "lace up your ice skates". except for mack... who would repeatedly confuse people by saying "lace em up", and then after the person he challenged would arrange their cards for a game, mack would try to grab one of his opponents cards (make a trade), leading to confusion all around:

me: its your turn mack

mack: chico, lace 'em up!

chico: crap (starts arranging his cards for what he assumes will be a head-to-head game vs macks team)

at this point mack would then reach for chico's cards

chico: what the hell are you doing?

mack: picking a card?

chico: why?

mack: to make a trade?

kas: but you said you wanted to play chico!?

mack: no i didn't... i said.... <trying to think about what he said>

me: "lace 'em up!" you said "lace' em up!" what he hell is he lacing up?

mack: um... his... tradin shoes

kas: what?
 
chico: unbelievable

mack: lace em up! i'll take this card.... AH, BER-BERNT... golden gums...
                      

add in a couple of 30 packs of busch light and some golden crust buff-chick sandos, and you had a hell of a friday night pregame.

as much as i enjoyed the hell out of this trip down memory lane, this has some present day context.

superstar, the marked card.

over new years eve i once again walked past the board games in uncle john house and there it was. slapshot. i opened it up, looked through the cards. such a cool game (i even snapped off a quick photo and sent it to my former competitors) at that point i decided to take the cards again, but to scan them and then make tee shirt with the characters on it.  how cool would a boney maloney tee be? or an 'ian jury' shirt, with "39, DiPietro" on the back?

i put the cards back, but was full planning on taking them before i left the next day.  as it turned out, i forgot to take them.  plan foiled.

a couple weeks later i posted the devastating news about the rick dipietro injury, and found that picture of ian jury to use. but since i was back in my 'slapshot' mind-frame, i kept looking around google for more, and stumbled across a blog which caused my heart to skip a beat. this was written in june of 2011, and it states that slapshot is back in print... holy smokes.

and after reading a little further, it appears that slapshot is "celebrated as the closing game each year at the World Boargame Championships"

world board game championships? i gotta check this out. sure enough, it exists. try exploring that site. i was able to see that slapshot has been played every year since 1993 at this thing.  a quick look at the calendar points out this championship event ended yesterday.

(also, billy bob, there is apparently a 'starship troopers' board game. you might need to look into this)

after pulling myself away from this unreal website, i take a quick look to amazon, and boom

$25 well worth spending, and today it arrived. very exciting.

now, i knew the cards would probably be updated, and some of the more... um... politically incorrect cards i expected to be omitted, but it didn't matter. this was a no brainer.

so i get home today and see the amazon box. open it up and see the cover is a bunch of familiar faces.

slash gordon, sir stanley kupp, el bos, friar puck... it's been too long, my friends.

 the original box just had le goon on the cover.... would have been nice to keep it the same, but i am not complaining.

hey, look, it's swede sixteen on the side!

i open the box up and my main fear is that they added new, lame players, or redid the illustrations. (the latter was slightly lessened, after seeing the cover of the box, where the original illustrations seemed to be in tact)

after quickly inspecting the cards, the the illustrations all seemed to be the exact same. sweet.  the cards themselved had this added gradient effect to correspond to each position... which i don't like (preferred it on a plain white card) but again, this is a nitpick.  so far so good.

the board game is essentially an updated version of the original, and now the only thing left is to inspect the cards for any missing names. 

fatrick. classic.

well, there were some i could see coming. the effeminate duo of gay blade and jake skate did not make the return trip. too bad. those guys were hilarious. also not included, the wonderfully awful golden gums.  thats three tough ones.

another thing i notice is they have renamed a couple.  this is annoying, because their replacement names are just lazy.  Snow Howe is now called 'snowballs'... and in a devestating turn they have redubbed "frosty todd" as "the iceman"

senseless change right there. he will forever be frosty todd to me.

i finally get through all the cards, and spot some inexcusable, glaring omissions. p.shooter. gone. slap happy. gone (this one was tough, as it was always a crowd pleaser when someone drafted 'slappy')

ummmm... no comment.

at this point i am confused. gay blade is out, yet puck luck and chubby checker were brought back? that doesn't make sense.

so the count is up to five players who have been omitted in the re-release of slapshot. (gay blade, jake skate, golden gums, slap happy... <sigh>... and p.shooter)

you know what, its not that bad. i wish those guys were in, but they all were 1's or 2's (or a zero, in the case of goldie).... this is a much bigger complaint, but i am still pretty satisfied with the crew that is included.... crap, i just realized iron orr has been left out. now this really makes no sense. not only was it a clever hockey pun, but iron orr was one of the best defensemen in the game.

another difference is they changed up some of the rankings. el bos is no longer a bruiser, but is now the highest rated defenseman (apparantley replacing iron orr).... his bruiser status appears to have been given to Frank N Stick.  there are some other ranking that have been changed a little, but nothing too crazy.

i am still very excited to have this game.  despite the losses of six great characters, i still have a deck of cards that included billy the skid, fast eddie, old man winters, cyclone henri, puck rodgers, antoni zamboni, and of course boney maloney. money well spent. i cannot wait to lace up my tradin' shoes again. 

hey, they spelled 'foWARDS' wrong.