The snow is finally here just in time for the Christmas season to get in to full swing. I won’t lie it is my favorite time of year, it’s also my birthday month so that could be part of the reason. I love everything to do with Christmas including having a real tree. Instead of talking stats and recaps about Minnesota’s sports teams I thought it’d be fun to do more of a personal story. 

At this time of year everyone talks about their favorite Christmas movie, mine is a tie between Home Alone and the Santa Clause. More so the Santa Clause because I absolutely love the “seeing isn’t believing, believing is seeing” quote. I’ve always been an optimistic type especially when it comes to sports. My team may be down 8-1 but I’ll still believe they have a way to come back and sometimes it has happened. 

That brings me to the sports topic and my favorite sports movie. Of course, it’s Miracle. The whole definition of that movie is hope and optimism. I may not have been alive during the real-life event but that movie does a good job of bringing you into that world. There are two other reasons I love that movie. The accuracy of the hockey, the fact that they cast real hockey players so the actual hockey would be as authentic as they could make it. The other being how well Kurt Russell portrayed Herb Brooks. 

Growing up, once I realized my career as a pro hockey player wasn’t going to pan out, I wanted to coach. I even tried to minor in it in college but of course life had other plans and I wasn’t able to pursue that part of my college education. Anyway, I had a fascination with the way Brooks coached, he got into the minds of his players and put together a team that worked, despite most of them never playing together before. It’s such an interesting concept to me and one I’ve delved into on and off in my post college life. 

Many may think Brooks was rather hard on his players and maybe he was, but sometimes that’s what players need. He made those kids believe they could win that game and they went out and did what many thought to be impossible, because they believed they could and they trained their hardest. Also, the style of play he chose, to throw their opponents game back in their faces was amazing. 

I love how that movie seems to come to life every time I watch it and I always find new details I never noticed before. I do agree with his theory on the NHL sending players to the Olympics as well. Of course, I love seeing my favorite athletes play for their respective countries but building teams out of “superstars” doesn’t always work out because they try to compete with each other rather than against the opponents. Things have changed a lot however since that took place and a lot of NHL players now focus more on “we” than “me” and it’s a great change to see. Of course, there are still players that think they’re the best thing to come around but they will always exist.  

For the end of my monologue on why I love this movie, if you haven’t seen it, you should. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, it’s a very entertaining movie that will make you want to chant, “USA, USA, USA”. It’s a very well-made movie that brings to life one of the biggest events in sports history. Like my Christmas movies, I do have one other sports movie that is one of my favorites but probably second to Miracle. That would be the Mighty Ducks, the original. I like them all but the first one is by far the best as with most movies, the originals are typically the best. 

What are your favorite Christmas and sports movies? Or the biggest question for the holiday season, do you have all your shopping done? I’m going to end this here and hopefully everyone has a good holiday season as well as a Happy New Year!