Mystery, Alaska is one of the best hockey movies ever made. It really takes the commercialized game back to its roots. Hockey is at its purest form when played outdoors in cold weather, with snow banks instead of boards, where skating on the frozen ponds and rivers was what you did for fun. Headlined by Russell Crowe and Burt Reynolds, this movie is set in the frozen tundras of Alaska, where a Saturday afternoon hockey game is the only thing the small community cares about. When one of their own makes it to the big city as a journalist for Sports Illustrated and promises to bring the NHL to town, everyone goes crazy at the possibilities. Of course the prospects of stardom on the national stage turns everything upside down and everyone loses their focus in life. When the New York Rangers finally come to town, along with their rules and regulations, the boys from Mystery give them everything they got. I love this movie because I grew up playing hockey outside where I had to dig my pucks out of the snow every time I missed the net. My town was obsessed with our high school hockey team because that was really the highest level of competitive hockey there was. Personally I wish I grew up in a remote community like this, where hockey was everything to everyone, which is the main reason I moved to Canada. I moved across a whole continent to work in hockey and Mystery, Alaska was one of the driving forces behind my love of the game. 9/10
Ten Stars or Less 