The Mighty Ducks - Mr. Ducksworth

Quack quack quack quack quack Mr. Ducksworth.

[quote]And is Ducksworth a good man? Or is he not?[/

A good man with principles until those principles cross over into his personal life. All his talk about fair play goes out the window when it comes time to do a favor another high society type.

He’s flawed and hypocritical.

I'm more confused about how Gordon Bombay scored 198 goals in a single season but completely gave up hockey because he missed a single penalty shot.

Nobody thought, damn this kid is a generational talent, maybe we should encourage him to keep playing?

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just a convenient ploy to keep the plot moving

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The 90s produced some really great kids sports movies, but none of them spent much time worrying about realism; on the contrary, they usually went out of their way to outright reject it ("Show me in the rule book where it says a dog can't play basketball!".

And as much as I love the Ducks:

* It was bullshite to make Banks switch teams in the middle of a season. If Banks wasn't a star everyone involved would have agreed that letting him stay where he was would be the right thing to do, but Bombay saw an opening to both strengthen his team and weaken the Hawks. If you want to play the "rules are rules" card then fine, but don't pretend like you had anyones best interest at heart but your own.

* It was bullshite to allow Fulton to join the team in the middle of the season. It's not like Fulton moved to the district after the season started. There would have been a clear sign up date deadline in place for the season and Fulton missed it by weeks if not months. Sorry, Fulton, try again next year.

* It was bullshite to allow Kenan Thompson to join the team in the middle of the Junior Olympics. I mean, the games ALREADY STARTED! Surely rosters and birth certificates and background checks for age and citizenship would have had to be submitted to the Junior Olympics committee well in advance of the games. Dude just rolled up one day and started playing.

* It was bullshite to allow Dean Portman to join the team IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME. And if joining the team after the game started wasn't bad enough, the dude likely hadn't even officially enrolled in the school as a student yet, all he'd done to that point was sign the letter to attend (based on Bombay's legal recommendation). The Ducks added a player to the annual student rivalry game who wasn't even officially a student.

Imagine a string of sports movies where a team kept winning only because they kept mysteriously adding ringers to their roster that no one knew about or had a chance to game plan for after the competition had already started. Does that sound like behavior you would attribute to the good guy team or the bad guy team? The fact of the matter is the entire Ducks dynasty was built on roster manipulation, underhanded dealings and an outright rejection of sportsmanship and fair play. Congratulations, Coach Bombay. You're the Bill Belichick of Minnesota youth hockey.

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I'm more confused about how Gordon Bombay scored 198 goals in a single season

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This snippet alone can stand on its own. If Gordon played 40 games in at the Pee Wee level, he'd be scoring practically 5 goals a game. 40 games would also most likely include tournaments in regional and national levels, which isn't really hinted at in the MD movies. That's a lot of games and a lot of goals for a kid under the age of 13.

All I'm saying is that it feels like a scriptwriter said 100 goals doesn't feel like enough for the audience to understand how good young Gordon was, so let's double it and call it a day without any fact checking. 50 goals could have sufficed for the story.

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The goal total isn't as shocking to me considering Gretzky's prodigious talent (that was apparent to all even at an incredibly early age), but the 85 game season for pee wee is pretty mind blowing.

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You forgot to account for the Metric conversion from Canada Pee Wee to US Pee Wee, (I kid).

Supposedly in the first movie Hans let's the audience know that Gordon scored those 198 goals in only 14 games. That's a laughable statistic.

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Supposedly in the first movie Hans let's the audience know that Gordon scored those 198 goals in only 14 games. That's a laughable statistic.

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I don't remember that at all, but if so that is laughable With a 14+ goal per game average they never would have had the championship game come down to a penalty shot. Hell, Bombay wouldn't have even been playing against kids his own age in some local league in Minnesota, his parents would have moved him to Canada and had him play up in age against better competition.

And while we're over-analyzing the Mighty Ducks:

* Bombay was a mad man for driving that limo out onto the ice. I don't care how thick it was, he should have been bounced from coaching the team right then and there. There was no reason to even risk it.

* Even as a kid (I was 8, almost 9 when it came out) I thought it was ridiculous the disdain the Hawks coach showed for Bombay over one missed shot 20 years earlier. And the speech he gives him about how he could have been one of the greats and now he's "not even a has been, (he's) a never was." Bombay's a rich-arse attorney with a near undefeated record and you're giving him shite over things that went down when we was 10 years old? Settle down, bro.

* It was ridiculous that they made up almost the entire Junior national team with players from one low level Minnesota hockey team (with a few high level ringers thrown in). Even making up an entire team of All Stars from one state would have been unbelievable, but all from just one rec league team? Who the hell makes that decision? In real life the Ducks get routed by just about every team they play. Hell, they would have probably had their hands full even with Trinidad and Tobago. Just not enough talent.

* Bombay lost full control of the team against Iceland and they should have been disqualified when they went full goon in the first or second period of the championship game. I mean, one player who wasn't even part of the shift came off the bench in the middle of a play and cattle roped an opponent. The movie should have ended with the refs rightly forfeiting the match in favor of Iceland and Bombay being shamed for not being able to control his players.

I'm sure I could think of a dozen+ more if I thought about it for awhile, feel free to add more.