When you think of Minnesota, you think of two things: Fargo and hockey. Tommy Haines’ latest documentary, Hockeyland explores the latter, immersing viewers into the hectic lives of two of the country’s best high school varsity hockey teams located in one of America’s snowiest states. Like most sports films, Hockeyland creates drama through rivalry choosing to focus on the Hermantown Hawks and the Eveleth-Gilbert Bears — rival teams with a lot of promise — as they make their way through a season of hockey. We follow players as they navigate the intense pressures of being on varsity hockey teams with occasional glimpses of their personal lives and plans after graduation.
Hermantown and Eveleth-Gilbert are small communities with a lot of snow and not much else to do but get involved in the local hockey scene. The parents (usually the mothers) of these players set up bake sales and fundraising opportunities outside each of the games, and shots of the crowd on game nights proves that hockey is kind of a big deal to these two small towns. Even though the game is rough, viewers won’t be able to help but feel the close-knit coziness of these hockey communities which is only enhanced by the film’s devotion to snow. Shots of residents shoveling their roofs, towing cars out of snowbanks, and in a particularly endearing moment, setting their mixed drink on a tiny makeshift shelf shoved into a large pile of snow surrounding a bonfire in their backyard prove that snow dominates the landscape here. After all, you can’t really have hockey without it.
Fans of the popular Netflix docuseries, Cheer may, at times, feel like Hockeyland is striving towards a similar goal of focusing on the emotional lives of the teenage boys on each team.
Perhaps the most impressive player to be featured is Hermantown Hawks’ Blake Biondi. He’s a star player who has caught the eye of NHL scouts, and for most of the film it’s understood that Biondi definitely has a future career in the game. He’s an impressive player, but for all his pomp, the camera spends considerably less time with him in favor of giving a voice to some of the other players. We spend a considerable amount of time with Indio, captain for the Hermantown Hawks who suffers from severe back problems that limit his ability to play, and Elliot, a player for the Eveleth-Gilbert Bears who is known around the town as a bit of a troublemaker. He’s recently started to turn his life around, and his love of hockey has helped him do that.
While Hockeyland is interesting to watch, it struggles to find its focal point, often shifting between the players’ personal lives and the actual business of playing hockey. For this reason, the film never seems to get off the ground, and with a run time of nearly two hours, this starts to be a problem. In some ways, Hockeyland might have been better suited for a mini docuseries which would have given the game and its players the space needed to really explore both avenues on a deeper level.
One of the more interesting things about Hockeyland are the few scenes where the coaches discuss the emotional lives of their players, impressing upon them the importance of these boys’ mental and emotional health. This seems like the perfect opportunity for Haines to explore the mental effects competitive sports can have on young men, but the opportunity to do so is quickly passed up in favor of more shots of hockey with little narration. At times, it feels like Haines wants to deepen this connection, but he never really seems like he knows how.
Overall, Hockeyland will be fun for those with a history playing the sport, but for those of us with less knowledge of the game, Haines’ documentary may fall a bit short. In a society where boys are often taught to damper their emotions in order to appear “strong,” Hockeyland had an opportunity to create meaningful dialogue about what it means to be a male varsity athlete under extreme pressure, but unfortunately, it chose to look the other way and completely missed the puck.
Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
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