Penguins defenseman Rob Scuderi was 10 or 11 years old when he first saw the hockey movie “Slap Shot,” the gritty tale of a downtrodden minor league hockey team that is now a cult classic.
It was “old-time hockey” personified, and he couldn’t get enough of it: the dirty Hanson brothers with their cheap shots and Coke bottle glasses, an angry Paul Newman on skates. It was a dark but hilarious tale, even in the edited-for-network-television version.
“My first memory of it is when the Hanson brother skated down the bench with his stick hanging over the opposing bench and raking them all as he went down,” Scuderi said.