This full-length documentary offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at our national sport, hockey. Taking in an entire season of the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, this film reveals the daily lives of players and managers on this Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team. Admired and treated like professionals, junior hockey players are teenagers absorbed by their future. Trainers, shareholders, agents, scouts and parents: all eyes are fixed on these elite young players, even though only a tiny number of them will succeed in playing at the highest level.
This full-length documentary offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at our national sport, hockey. Taking in an entire season of the Baie-Comeau Drakkar, this film reveals the daily lives of players and managers on this Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team.
Admired and treated like professionals, junior hockey players are teenagers absorbed by their future. Trainers, shareholders, agents, scouts and parents: all eyes are fixed on these elite young players, even though only a tiny number of them will succeed in playing at the highest level.
Before the film, brainstorm (in a group or individually)
ideas about professional athletes and their lifestyle (for example, training
vs. competition, business vs. career building, family vs. personal life).
After viewing, have students compare their views with the reality in the film.
What challenges do the young athletes in this film face? What sacrifices do
they make? Discuss the careers and lives of celebrity athletes and how success
has affected their performance and personal lives.
Junior, Isabelle Lavigne & Stéphane Thibault, provided by the National Film Board of Canada