D3: The Mighty Ducks

Two-Way Hockey and Learning to Trust

It has been the Season of Hockey so far this fall. My son and I went to a Boston Bruins game back in October, we’ve already been to a couple of college hockey games, and I’ve watched more regular season hockey than I ever have before. It’s such a fun, fast-paced, elegant, but also brutally physical sport.

Hockey is a sport that I’ve always loved, but for the most part, have never made it a mainstay in my life. There’s only so much time to devote to the end of football season, both basketball and hockey season, and then baseball in the spring. Hockey tends to get the short end of the stick with my attention. Not this year though. I’ve made a concerted effort to change that, thankfully with the help of my fantasy hockey league that I want to tell you all about.

I’m part of this online community that was started by a couple of local sports radio hosts. It’s called The I-80 Club. The foundation of the I-80 Club is a shared passion of Nebraska Football and Basketball, but it has really grown into much more than that. Our conversations have branched out to so many other topics….other sports, food, books, and even the weather. To outsiders, Jeff Monken and Mike Johanns are just a football coach and a former politician. To us, they’re patron saints. There are inside jokes and genuine friendships and it’s a really cool community.

This year, eight of us have pioneered the Interstate 80 Hockey League, or I80HL for short. Though this league is brand new, it is already steeped in tradition. Our Stanley Cup is the Burney-Morrison Trophy, named after the two governors that oversaw the construction of Interstate 80 through next Nebraska. We have a couple rivalry trophies, including one that’s a reuben sandwich and a bull drinking maple syrup. No disrespect to the National Hockey League, but I guarantee that the Original Six weren’t this creative in the early aughts of pro hockey.

The creativity of our teams are the best part of the league though. They’re a true reflection of each person participating in the league:

• Benson Hockey Club

• Elkhorn Valley Bigfoot

• Flanagan Lake Snow Gators

• Kansas City Royals Hockey Club

• Maple Syrup Drinkers

• The New York Yankees Hockey Club

• Roca Red Foxes

• Wheel, Snipe, Jelly

So yeah, our league has everything except a merchandise licensing deal with Fanatics!

Ask 99.9% of Millennial hockey fans and they would say the Mighty Ducks movies were an integral part of their hockey fandom. The first two films were definitely my gateway into the sport. With Mighty Ducks, you have the quintessential underdog story. This group of kids in urban Minnesota are the pushover District-5 hockey team of the PeeWee league. This team and their new coach, Gordon Bombay, learn to trust each other, become the Mighty Ducks, and win the city championship. D2: The Mighty Ducks is the Miracle on Ice of kids hockey movies. The Team USA Ducks defeat Iceland, which is the parallel to the USSR in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Defeating Iceland to win the gold medal at the Junior Goodwill Games is the pinnacle for our Mighty Ducks, much like defeating Drago and singlehandedly winning the Cold War was the peak of the mountain for Rocky. D3: The Mighty Ducks is similar to Rocky V as it scales back the theatrics with a more mature and personal story for our protagonists.

The Mighty Ducks are off to high school. These kids from urban Minneapolis/St. Paul get rewarded for their hockey exploits with scholarships to Eden Hall High School. Eden Hall is an elite private high school and a hockey powerhouse. Mighty Ducks captain, Charlie Conway, is really the focal point of the story. The movie opens up with Charlie finding out that Gordon Bombay will no longer coach the team. This is a bomb dropped on Charlie right off the bat. The man that was his coach, role model, and father figure will play a lesser role in his life.

The new man leading the team is Coach Orion, who had a short stint in the NHL before becoming a high school freshman hockey coach. Charlie rejects the philosophy and person of Coach Orion at the moment they meet. First, it’s time to put away the childish play. They’re committed to “two-way hockey,” a more physical and defensive way of playing the game. Second, they are no longer the Ducks. It’s time to represent the school colors. And third, Charlie is no longer captain. That leadership position is something to be earned, and not entitled to.

There’s something that Charlie says to Coach Orion that has stuck with me ever since I watched this movie, “You’re breaking up the best thing that any of us ever had.” What Gordon Bombay gave to this kids cannot be discounted. They were once rejects, but this team was a place where they could belong. The “Duck” is more than a moniker. It’s a symbol of their unity, accomplishments, memories, and friendship. But what Charlie doesn’t realize yet is that sometimes you have to let go what you loved to grow yourself and later reclaim that love to give it deeper meaning.

Charlie may hate Coach Orion at first, but this is my kind of coach. He’s far and away the best coach in the series and the Eden Hall High School Athletic Director was out his mind having Coach Orion coach the freshman team and not the Varsity.

Now, we love Gordon Bombay here. He’s all-time great sports movie coach. However, he makes some very questionable coaching decisions that need to be criticized:

• Two-Way Hockey - Gordon Bombay didn’t care about defense. Sure, he led the Ducks to the PeeWee Championship and the gold medal at the Junior Goodwill Games but his coaching style wasn’t conducive to the next level. Let’s be real, Adam Banks had a future in the NHL and Guy Germaine had Division I College Hockey potential. Those guys were never going to take the next step by playing Cowboy Roundup at practice and running the Flying V.

• Julie “The Cat” Gaffney - One of the most mind boggling coaching decisions from Bombay was refusing to play Goldberg at goalie over Julie “The Cat” Gaffney in D2. This girl was unstoppable between the pipes and didn’t get her chance until the final shot of the shootout against Iceland in the gold medal game. Coaching malpractice. Coach Orion set the tone on day one by putting Julie in the net.

We ragged on Gordon Bombay a bit, but he’s still the Minnesota Miracle Man. He’s still the guy that gave these kids a family in the Ducks and he plays such an important role in Charlie’s life. The stretch of film when Charlie quits the team, Hans passes away, Bombay mentors Charlie, and Charlie re-joins the team is pure gold. This conversation between Bombay and Charlie is pure gold. It is the impetus to Charlie trusting Coach Orion, re-joining the team, and getting back to the path of his full potential as a hockey player.

Charlie learns that Coach Orion left the NHL to take care of his daughter who was paralyzed in a car accident. We realize that his emphasis on defense is more than a strategy for the game, but also a philosophy for life. He’s a hard ass coach for a reason. Life is tough, but you have to be tougher. Hockey is a great sport to make yourself tougher.

Charlie re-joins the team, embraces Two-Way Hockey, and the team strengthens their bond Coach Orion. They all learn to trust and believe in each other because that’s what Two-Way Hockey is all about. Defense is about staying in your spot, doing your job with full energy, and trusting your teammates to do their job as well. When one teammate gets beat, you pick them up and help them out.

Remember when Coach Orion made the kids dump their Ducks jerseys? I think he takes a few steps of growth himself. He realizes the importance of this symbol to his players and gets them new Mighty Ducks jerseys for Varsity vs JV Showdown. Charlie even re-earns the Captain patch.

The game is intense. The Mighty Ducks need to show that they belong by beating this Varsity team of State Champs. Luckily, they have this new defensive philosophy which is the only way they can beat this bigger and more experienced team. The score is 0-0 for almost the entirety of all three periods….and then Charlie gets a breakaway for a game winning goal, but he has learned to trust more than just his new coach. Charlie makes the most important play that a hockey player can make: the extra pass for your teammate to get a better shot. Charlie Conway gets the assist. Goldberg hits the shot to win the game.

This pretty much ends the story of the Mighty Ducks. There was a Disney+ series about a new group of kids and a grizzled Gordon Bombay working as an ice rink manager. It ran for two seasons, but was eventually canceled and even taken off the streaming service. A few of the original players show up in season one, but I honestly can’t remember what we learn about their lives as adults. This de-canonization means that we can only speculate what happened after the Varsity vs JV Showdown….

I think Coach Orion gets promoted as the Varsity Head Coach the next season. He leads the newly branded Eden Hall Ducks to three straight State Championships. What about after high school? Charlie was never good enough for college hockey, but I could see him raising a family and coaching the Mighty Ducks PeeWee team…you know, like Coach Bombay. Of course, Fulton Reed was his assistant coach. Adam Banks? NHL Star, Gold Medal, Olympian, and he breaks all of Wayne Gretzky’s records. Guy Germaine had a solid College Hockey career before getting into broadcasting. Goldberg was a perennial fifth place finisher in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Championship. Connie and Julie “The Cat” had phenomenal careers as Women’s College Hockey players and eventually coach in the PWHL. What does Averman do with his life? English teacher and Coach Orion’s assistant at Eden Hall.

The Mighty Ducks movies have been an important part of my life since I was a kid. It was really fun sharing them with my son recently. D3 is the worst reviewed and most panned of the trilogy, but I think it deserves lots of praise for a deeper and more personal story. As an adult, I really love the third one. Two-Way Hockey and learning to trust others are great philosophies for life.