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Review Ice Kings By The OFB Team 18 March, 2008 Tonight begins a six game road trip for the Capitals. A trip which finds our weekend bare of hockey, save for Friday night s game in Atlanta. We have a solution for you. Grab your favorite puck soda, ready the pop corn get a copy of the documentary movie ICE KINGS. Ice Kings is about high school hockey at Mount St. Charles Academy, a Catholic high school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. What sets Mount St. Charles Academy known simply as The Mount apart from any other high school in any sport is their consecutive state championships from 1978 to 2003 all under the guidance of the same coach, Bill Belisle. That s 26 straight titles. While the focus is on the Mount, it can be argued that the main character is high school hockey in Rhode Island. When you think of high school football, you think Texas. When you think of high school hockey, you should think Rhode Island. Award winning writer/producer/director Craig E. Shapiro does a wonderful job setting the stage with the history of Rhode Island and the importance of hockey. The movie has a Discovery Channel-type feel to it, with vivid imagery, strong narration, and plenty of interviews with known hockey commodities including Garth Snow, Mathieu Schneider, Lou Lamoriello, and ex-Capitals coach Ron Wilson. You learn of Rhode Island s history, some unique quirks, and their love of hockey. Another major character in the movie is The Mount s home rink. A former airplane hanger, Adelard Arena is a formidable foe in its own right. Small. Cramped. Intimidating. Like an old-school NHL rink. The unique feature of Adelard Arena is not necessarily what it has, but rather, what it lacks: Plexiglass. Adelard is as old school as you can get with chicken wire chain link fencing, really separating the spectators from the athletes. You may have heard about the Michigan Division I Championship going eight overtimes before co-champions were crowned this year? Rhode Island can claim a been there, done that attitude with the 1988 championship. A normal two game series needed a third game do decide the winner. Game three was tied at double-over time. That s where the rules take over which cancels the game and adds a fourth. Would you believe a fifth game is added after the fourth game is canceled after the second consecutive double-over time game? It s a great film worthy of your time and effort and an excellent addition to your library of hockey movies. --on frozen blogA love letter to Rhode Island and high school hockey In Rhode Island, Mount St. Charles Academy is the king of the hill in high school hockey. A private Catholic school in Woonsocket, Mount St. Charles has been playing the game for almost a century. Led by the father and son team of Bill and Dave Belisle, the program is known for producing world-class players Brian Lawton, Bryan Berard, Garth Snow and Keith Carney, among others, all the while piling up a string of 26 consecutive state championships. But all good things must come to an end, and that's part of the story that gets told in Ice Kings, a documentary that did its time in regional film festivals in New England and was recently released on DVD. But to say that the film only tells the story about how a public school, Toll Gate High, dethroned Mount St. Charles in March 2004 would be doing the film a disservice. Instead, director Craig Shapiro rewinds the story into the early years of the Mount St. Charles program, beginning with how a French-Canadian Catholic cleric from Montreal founded the program and kick-started the state's love affair with high school hockey. Instead of telling the story himself, Shapiro lets the people who know it best -- Rhode Island hockey fans -- tell you. Also included are interviews with fans of the long-gone Providence Reds, the state's first professional team, including more than a few appearances by San Joe Sharks coach Ron Wilson. Wilson's father Larry was the team's coach for two seasons, and played high school hockey with Cranston East. It's interviews like those that help set the scene for Mount St. Charles's winning streak, which is told through the words of the school's alumni and players of the state's other great programs that spent the better part of three decades trying to dethrone them. For years, it didn't matter what team came down the pike, they all lost. That was,until two of the state's great hockey-playing families, the Gaffneys and the Cavanaughs, came together by accident to spark the rise of public school power Toll Gate. The film, which comes in at a little over an hour, is narrated by sportscaster Bill Macatee, but it almost seems he gets in the way of the folks who know the story best. Still, Shapiro's Ice Kings is a great sports story told well, and one that deserves space in any hockey fan's DVD collection. --The Sporting News