Doug Glatt (Scott) (based on the real life player Doug Smith) is a slightly dimwitted, but generally kind bar bouncer from western Massachusetts who packs one hell of a punch. While attending a hockey game, he gets into a fight with a player and impresses the coach of a local beer-league team, who offers him a position. Doug gets the role of an "enforcer," an untalented player who is primarily responsible for protecting his teammates and brawling with their opponents.
Doug's impressive fighting skills get him invited to a minor league team and charged with protecting its star player Xavier LaFlamme, a former NHLer who got busted down to the minors after a confrontation with legendary enforcer Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber) left him shell-shocked. Over the course of the movie, Doug must navigate a complicated relationship with a hockey groupie, Eva, reconcile his new career with his bookish family, and prepare for an inevitable collision with Rhea himself.
It was followed up by a sequel, Goon Last Of The Enforcers.
This film contains examples of the following tropes:
- 555: The call-in number for "Hot Ice". Averted in a shot of Doug's cell phone when he receives a text.
- Accidental Athlete: Working as a bouncer, and being naturally tough, have made Doug the perfect hockey enforcer.
- Affably Evil: Ross Rhea, though evil is a bit of a stretch. He's very good at what he does, is quite skilled at getting inside his opponents’ heads, and is not above goading other players into fighting him when he's not ramming them into the boards. But he always keeps a sense of humor about it.
- All-Loving Hero: Though Doug isn't a literal example, he does embody many qualities. He's a Nice Guy, who doesn't seem to bear prejudice against anyone, he flat out states that he likes protecting people, and tells Laflamme who clearly hates him (At first) that he will protect him no matter what because they're teammates. He also let's Eva's ex-boyfriend beat the ever-loving snot out of him after she leaves the guy for him (all the while apologizing) because he thinks he deserves it, offers a similar scenario to Laflamme if he thinks it will make amends, and his sacrifices for the team causes them to start an all-out melee against an opposing team, and inspires them to play harder during the last game.
- Apologetic Attacker: Part of Doug’s introduction montage is him roughing up an unruly bar patron in the alley while his boss looks on. Doug thinks the guy has had enough. When his boss disagrees, Doug winces and says “Sorry” before continuing the beatdown.
- Babies Ever After: Doug and Eva get married between the two movies and near the end of it have their first child.
- Badass Boast: Ross Rhea, to Doug Glatt: "You have my respect. Whatever that means to you, you got it. But know this shit hard. If ever there comes a time when it gets down to the marrow, and it's you and me... Kid, I will lay you the fuck out." Doubles as a Worthy Opponent moment.
- Based on a True Story: Doug "the Hammer" Smith, whose real fights are played during the credits.
- Berserk Button: Don't call someone gay in front of Doug. Doug’s beloved brother is gay. Using it as an insult will cost you teeth.
- Big Brother Instinct: Though Doug is actually the younger brother, he grew up defending his homosexual brother from bullies. Doug has no real bloodlust to speak of, but he feels like he should always protect others. As luck would have it, there happens to be a hockey position that entails exactly that.
- The Big Guy / The Brute: Both Doug Glatt and Ross Rhea. The two are protagonist and antagonist respectively, but are typically relegated to being the ones that do the fisticuffs.
- Brand X: All of the teams and leagues mentioned in the movie are fake even though a lot of work went into the logos, uniforms and names. The "Orangetown Assasins" belong to the fictional NCHL, roughly the equivalent of the real life ECHL or other AA league. "The Halifax Highlanders" belong to the EMHL, said to be right below the big leagues making them the equivalent of the AAA-level American Hockey League. While NHL cities are mentioned, (Boston, Montreal, etc.) the teams are still fake, like the "Boston Blackjacks" and the "Montreal Corsairs" name of the national league for hockey is not mentioned specifically.
- Blood from the Mouth: And there is a LOT of it.
- Canada Eh: While the protagonist and his friends are Yanks (in the strictest sense of the word), he plays for a Canadian team, and his girlfriend Eva and most of the teams he faces are Canadian. The accents can get downright painful in a couple of instances, more notably when Ross does his "coming back" speech.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Most of the Highlanders are at least a bit quirky, but Belchior (the goaltender from Regina, Saskatchewan) is downright nuts— he's got a prescription drug addiction and a Hair-Trigger Temper, talks to the goalposts as though they're his imaginary friends, and his goalie mask features a picture of his mother on it.
- Cluster F-Bomb
- Combat Medic: Kim, one of the Highlanders' players, is playing hockey to pay his way through med school, and seems to serve this role on the team, in a way— he's always the first to assist the trainers in tending to an injured player and even patches himself up when he gets hurt.
- He ends up becoming the team's actual medic in the sequel.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Most of the hockey fights in the film are pretty even, and the climactic battle between Doug and Rhea crosses into How Much More Can He Take?, but there are a few of these:
- Doug’s first practice with the Assassins culminates in him mopping the floor with a dozen guys who all try to take him on at once. Made all the more awesome by the fact that at this point, Doug can’t skate, and stomps the shit out of all of them despite being unable to stay on his feet.
- Doug's first fight as a member of the Highlanders is a One-Hit KO.
- Later, Doug beats down an opposing player without even looking at him, instead grinning at LaFlamme the whole time to send the message that they're on the same side.
- Another occurs when Doug is suspended for the first game against St. John's and the Highlanders' aging team captain steps in to fight Ross Rhea in his stead (and gets his ass handed to him).
- In the sequel, Cain doing this to Doug sets off the whole plot as the injuries sustained forced Doug into early retirement.
- Diegetic Switch: When Doug arrives in Halifax.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Doug, for much of the movie.
- Dumb Muscle: Doug isn't too bright. He's painfully aware of it too. It even results in a
Tear Jerker when his parents find out about what he does and try to convince him that he can be something better, like a doctor, and he's forced to angrily rebut their remarks by saying no, he's stupid, and he's always going to be stupid, but that hockey is something he can do well. - Expy: Many fans of the movie have pointed out that there are a lot of similarities between Doug and Rocky Balboa; both of them are kinda dimwitted, both of them are exceedingly polite and friendly, both of them are Made of Iron, and both of them suddenly find themselves sports celebrities.
- French-Canadian Jerk: Xavier, and everyone in Quebec. Xavier eventually turns out to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Game-Breaking Injury: The impetus of the sequel. Right after being promoted to Captain, Doug gets absolutely annihilated by a newcomer, Anders Cain, and suffers a bad concussion alongside wrecking his right shoulder and is forced into immediate retirement. The movie is spent by him trying to adjust and get back. Ultimately he throws one last right hook to lay out Cain once and for all, knowing very well it would end his own career.
- Genius Bruiser: Unlike Doug, Ross Rhea comes across as plenty savvy. Besides being very skilled at psychological warfare, he has no illusions about the reality of his job.
- Golden Snitch: A rare intangible example, as in the final game Doug defeating Rhea in their climactic fight invigorates Xavier, who scores three straight goals and seemingly propels his team into the playoffs virtually single-handed. Justified in that Rhea had brutally beaten Xavier in their last meeting several years before, and Xavier had been playing poorly ever since, unable to get past it. Seeing Doug beat the crap out of Rhea showed Xavier that he was protected and Rhea wasn't that tough, and brought him out of his funk.
- A similar thing happens in the sequel. Doug defeats Cain once and for all, and the Highlanders are able to score the game-winning goal not long after. Also justified in that the game was already tied, and Cain was not only a lunatic making life hard on offense but also the Wolfdogs' main scorer. Him being taken off made life MUCH easier for the Highlanders' attack.
- Good Is Not Nice: Doug himself isn't a completely nice person. Polite, but not completely nice.
- Hard-Work Montage: Doug goes through one of these after being signed by the Orangetown Assassins. He is a bouncer who is experienced at dropping guys in the back alley, but he doesn't know how to skate. Thanks to the efforts of his persistent Coach to teach him basic skills, intercut with his best friend making him watch fight tapes of Ross Rhea in action, Doug eventually becomes a gladiator on the ice.
- He's Back!: Two instances in the sequel. Doug himself returning to the team after a long absence and immediately making a positive impact without even needing to start a fight. Then Ross Rhea coming out of his own retirement to help the Highlanders while Doug is out on suspension.
- Hookers and Blow: Xavier takes up a steady habit of spending his money on this after getting demoted to the minors after his concussion. Turns out he faked how bad the concussion was as an excuse.
- I Can Still Fight!: In the climatic final fight, Doug gets his ass royally kicked by Ross, long past the point when the refs want to stop the fight, but neither Doug nor Ross are willing to concede. In the end, Doug is almost blinded, breaks his ankle, and is bleeding so much that one has to wonder just how much more he can take. But with Heroic Willpower, Doug manages to turn the tables on Ross and lay him the fuck out, along with one of his teeth.
- Lame Comeback: Doug is far better with his fists than with his words.Opposing Enforcer: Hey Glatt, you little fuckin' dickweed. You try any of that shit you did against Hamilton on me, I'll light your fuckin' ass up!Doug: Hey! I'll light your ass... back up... on fire!
- His first practice with the Assassins starts with this when one of the more experienced players insults him. Doug stutters through a poorly-conceived retort, then gives up, declares "Fuck it," and knocks the guy out.
- Mangst: Ross Rhea. After a teammate takes a vicious elbow to the face, Rhea smacks the offender in the head with his stick and is suspended and sent down to the minors. He winds up at St. Johns where he grew up and got his start playing hockey. When on TV, he is glad to be back home, but throughout the movie is shown sitting alone night after night in an all-hours dirty spoon by himself with no friends, no fans, constantly keeping tabs on Doug who has been labeled by the sports media as the "next great enforcer." When his team faces Doug's, his normal level of thuggery on the ice turns brutal as he doesn't want to be remembered as going out as a "Middle aged, Nancy-Boy fuck." Ross' aggression gets exaggerated in the final two matches to make us root for Doug, otherwise his natural charm would split the audience.
- Metaphorgotten: Ogilvey's pre-game speeches tend to devolve into drunken ramblings, which leads to this:Ogilvey: We gotta work harder than them, okay? [...] We gotta be triceps, biceps, r-ceps hard! Greek fuckin' underground gay porn hard! Highlanders, gay porn hard!
- Necessarily Evil: Rhea's position as an enforcer is what he does best, but there's no actual malice in his actions. He has a job to do, and he does it very well, but he's not at all a bad guy.
- Nice Jewish Boy: Zig-zagged. He's more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, with a Hair-Trigger Temper, and is not very bright, but he's a genuinely good person and means well. He's also adopted, as is his brother.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Of various real NHL players, and the announcer at all the Highlanders' games is basically Don Cherry in a normal suit.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Ross Rhea, in the diner, when he sees Doug Glatt walk through the door. But it turns to surprise when Doug politely introduces himself and offers a handshake, which Ross returns with a confused expression.
- Subverted in the final fight. Ross has knocked Doug to the ice twice. They're both bleeding from their noses and mouths, Doug is screaming on the ice, half blind with a broken ankle. Doug manages to stagger to his feet, with the crowd cheering and the soundtrack blaring, and what's Ross's reaction to seeing a man come back from two epic beatdowns? Is it shock? Panic? Amazement? None of the above. It's pure respect.
- Papa Wolf: Doug is extremely dedicated to protecting his team, even Xavier. His protective instincts come from defending his gay older brother from bullies.
- Passing the Torch: Implied to be Ross Rhea's intentions as he fights Doug in his self-professed final year before retirement. Assuming Halifax holds on for the victory after the credits start rolling, St. John's misses the playoffs which likely makes this the final game of Rhea's (semi)-pro career.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Stephenson, one of Doug's teammates on the Highlanders. He's a nice dude, but tends mostly to repeat what the manager and team captain say.
- Punch-Clock Hero/Villain: Both Doug and Rhea are genuinely nice guys and only beat the living crap out of other people because it's their job. Very much Truth in Television with enforcers in professional hockey.
- Even though Rhea loves to brawl he will sometimes pass on the opportunity. When challenged by Ogilvey, the washed-up Halifax team captain to fight, Rhea gives him a chance to change his mind since he knows the old player is not known for fisticuffs. Ogilvey pushes for the fight, and it does not end well for him.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Halifax Highlanders were a floundering team featuring a drunk captain in the midst of a nasty divorce, a disaffected ex-NHL superstar, and a pill-popping goalie to name a few. Then Doug came along and, while most of their personality quirks remained, they started winning games.
- Refuge in Audacity: This movie would be almost unbearable to watch if it tried to take itself seriously.
- Shout-Out: Belchior's talking to the goalposts is almost certainly a reference to Hockey Hall of Famer Patrick Roy
, who did the same thing. - Spiritual Successor: To Slap Shot.
- Spiteful Spit: Two characters engage in an extended volley.
- Those Two Guys: The Russian brothers who continually antagonize Belchior.
- Title Drop
- Took a Level in Badass: Doug takes a few levels in skill. Going from not being able to stand on skates to eventually playing on the powerplay and shorthanded for a farm-team. Not bad for an enforcer with limited skills.
- Train-Station Goodbye
- Truth in Television: Georges Laraque's character politely asks Doug for a fight, and cheerfully congratulates him on a good fight afterwards, similar to what he did here as a member of the Phoenix Coyotes. The most important part of the unwritten "code" governing fighting in hockey is that both combatants must be willing: hockey fights are rarely about anger or hurting someone, and attacking someone on the ice without consent will get you ejected from the game at least, and possibly brought up on assault charges off the ice.
- Twin Threesome Fantasy: The two Russian brothers frequently taunt Belchior about having had his mother and don't think sex with a brother is gay causing Belchior to quip "It's gay with a dash of something else on it." when they want to sign Doug's weiner.
- Wimp Fight: About in the middle of the movie, Xavier and Pat battle by spitting on each other.
- Worthy Opponent: Ross sees Doug as this, to the point that he refuses to let the ref break up their fight in the climax, no matter how gruesome it got.
