Culture
How an injury led Jets goalie Chris Driedger to create a documentary about roller hockey
Chris Driedger was 16 minutes away from winning the 2022 men’s World Championships for Team Canada when disaster struck.
A post-to-post push led to the complete tear of his ACL, ending his night and putting his professional hockey career in jeopardy. He watched Finland complete its comeback from the sidelines, feeling helpless, haunted by the “click” sound his knee had made when he pushed into his right post.
Driedger was given a nine month recovery timeline. Back at home, it was six months before doctors let him skate. Instead of letting the monotony of daily rehab defeat him, he discovered a new passion and spent the next three years following it through.
This is the story of how a Winnipeg-born goaltender — now part of the Jets organization, just down the road from where he grew up — found himself producing a documentary film about a California-based roller hockey league with one of the most unique backstories in hockey history. It’s called “Pro Beach Hockey: Sun, Surf and Slapshots” and Driedger says producing it helped change his mindset at one of the darkest times in his career.
“It was a lifesaver having something else going on to take my mind off the fact that I wasn’t able to play hockey — which is, you know, my entire life.”
By the late 1990s, Wayne Gretzky had come and gone from Los Angeles but his legacy remained. Interest in hockey was at an all-time high and businesspeople went looking for a way to capitalize. One of those people was David B. McLane, the wrestling promoter who started GLOW: The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
McLane wanted to take a run at roller hockey, taking his experience in the entertainment industry to brand new terrain, so he created a league called Pro Beach Hockey. Games were played on outdoor rinks with ramps behind the net, angled glass to keep the ball (not puck) in the play, and a two point line that worked similarly to the three point line in basketball.
The league was populated with ex-roller-hockey stars, including a few NHL players, running for two months for three straight summers — turning roller hockey into an outsized spectacle. It was made for TV, with all three seasons airing on ESPN2, but developed a cult audience at Huntington Beach where it was filmed.
Driedger was four years old when the league launched. He didn’t find out about it until partway through his first season with the Seattle Kraken, where he was reunited with longtime teammate and friend, Max McCormick.
Over brunch, McCormick told Driedger about his friend Jake Cimperman and the idea for a “roller hockey documentary.” McCormick was skeptical at first, Driedger says, but the moment McCormick showed him the league’s teaser video, Driedger was hooked.
“It was this weird, interesting mix of the WWE and the NHL that I’d never seen before,” Driedger says. “I just watched it and instantly thought, ‘If I saw this teaser, I would want to watch the documentary.’”
Driedger nudged McCormick to set up a call with Cimperman. That call and the ones that followed went well; eventually Driedger and McCormick helped send Cimperman to Los Angeles to start interviewing people for the film. The three of them held regular meetings to sort out the direction of the documentary, plan marketing, and strategize its release, creating a production company called Sin Bin Studios.
Driedger says the biggest driving force for his involvement was his own curiosity.
“The league was just so wild and fast-paced and unique and aired on ESPN. That brought this level of intrigue and I wanted to know more. There were ramps behind the net and I wanted to know who thought of that. How did that play out in games? Did the players go up these ramps? I’m thinking in my head: Imagine there’s ramps on the ice in hockey. That would be absurd. So there were a lot of questions I wanted answers to.”
An outdoor rink at Huntington Beach. (Courtesy Shelly Castellano)
“And the characters were really good. Mike Butters from Winnipeg was playing at 6-foot-3, 255 pounds or something like that and he was a fighter … All of it was before my time but it just seemed wild, like I wanted to know way more about it just from the teaser.”
All of those questions took a backseat during Driedger’s first season in Seattle — and again when Driedger got the call to play for Team Canada.
But the curiosity remained. When Driedger tore his ACL, went home, and started what would become nine months of rehab, he needed a healthy place away from the rink to direct his ambitions. He’d already taken a personality aptitude test facilitated by former Jets defenceman Jay Harrison through the NHLPA. He’d spoken with personal strategists John Hierlihy and Duncan Fletcher, exploring business opportunities in real estate.
It was only after Driedger got hurt that he thought to mention the documentary to Hierlihy, who proved to be an invaluable resource.
“John immediately mentioned two or three people I should talk to. ‘This buddy of mine actually played in the league. This buddy of mine is a lawyer in film, he works for Paramount Plus — talk to him.’ It just opened up a treasure trove of contacts that I didn’t even know was out there,” Driedger says.”
As Driedger chased down those contacts and became even more invested in the process, his curiosity for Pro Beach Hockey continued to grow. He was fascinated by the league flying 60 professional hockey players to a luxurious California locale like Huntington Beach, where each team was given their own open bar with unlimited food and alcohol.
“Like, how does that play out?” he says, sounding fascinated. “You find out in the documentary. It’s complete chaos.”
The chaos was part blessing, part filmmaking challenge. At first, it was difficult for Cimperman to get interviews with some of the key voices for the documentary. Driedger’s theory is that Huntington Beach got a bit too wild for some athletes — not everybody wanted to revisit those days. But people he talked to about the documentary wanted to help. It turned out Bobby Ryan was a huge fan of Pro Beach Hockey when he was a kid, for example, and that Luc Robitaille and Pat Brisson — two of the biggest names in California hockey — played on the same roller hockey team back in the day. One by one, the pieces fell into place.
“We got Bobby on the documentary and he’s great. He has a cool appearance where he had a crush on the host of Pro Beach Hockey … Luc Robitaille is a big part of the documentary. He was playing on rollerblades all summer on the beaches and he felt that was a bit of his edge. Same with Pat Brisson, the super agent. He and Luke were on the same roller hockey team in the summer … They bring a lot of firepower to the doc and they’re both very well-spoken, very prominent people. I think it just adds a bit of legitimacy.”
At this point, “Pro Beach Hockey: Sun, Surf and Slapshots” is in its final stages of postproduction. Driedger, McCormick, and Cimperman are planning to release it later this year, capping off over three years of collaboration on a project that may not have come to fruition without Driedger’s knee injury. He missed almost an entire NHL season for Seattle. He has only played two NHL games since, but continues to carve out an AHL career.
Driedger’s on-ice career was in legitimate peril — ultimately leading him back to his hometown all of these years later. The Jets had been interested in Driedger for a while; it seems reasonable that they’ll be interested in his AHL mentorship and NHL experience again when the 30-year-old’s contract is up for renewal this summer. For his part, Driedger says he understands he has one shot to make an impression in Winnipeg, calling it a “dream” to play for his hometown team. He’s going to do everything he can to make the most of it, starting with his Winnipeg-themed mask.
There will be tributes to all of his minor hockey teams: the Fort Garry Flyers, the AA Twins, and AAA Monarchs. He hopes to have another opportunity to design a Winnipeg-themed mask next season, but knows more than most that nothing is promised in the NHL. He says he’s making the most of his time in Winnipeg, spending time with close family and friends, and continuing to push himself on the ice and off of it.
“There’s so many ups and downs in hockey. Sometimes things are going great, you’re playing fantastic, and you’re moving up. You’re playing in the minors and now you’re in the NHL and things are exciting. But everyone has down years where things aren’t going well. There’s injuries. It’s just a roller coaster ride, man, and I’ve found having something else going to keep me grounded is super, super helpful.”
Driedger understands that nothing is promised in film, either. He’s thrilled that athletes are starting to take media production into their own hands, but understands Sin Bin Studios won’t likely start its next project with the kind of budget Michael Jordan had for “The Last Dance” or David Beckham for “Beckham.”
“Max and I, we learn by doing,” he says. “The best way to learn is to go ahead, take the plunge, and go do it. It’s been a blast.”
(Top photo of Chris Driedger, Chris Cimperman and Max McCormick: Courtesy Jake Cimperman)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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