True crime stories are very hit or miss with me. There are a number of factors involved and a few of them are include how well the production value is, whether or not the producers / directors senselessly make the feature longer than it needs to be, and also whether or not i am high and / or drunk when i see it.
I was about 7 drinks deep when I started watching this, which isn't a lot for me and I found it very entertaining despite not really being a hockey fan.
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The "Untold" series isn't particularly groundbreaking all they are doing is finding stories that haven't been talked about in a long time and I am guessing it helps if the people who are in the story are willing to go on camera and talk about it.
In this particular episode it follows a family that has mob ties and how they used a lot of their money to build a very successful minor-league hockey team that was actually something that I heard about when it was going on because it was so unusual.
The team was called the "Trashers" because the owner of the team made his fortune in the sanitation industry - which seems to be something that gangsters are involved in on a regular basis. Jimmy Galante was this guy with mob ties and he bought the team for his 17 year-old son who loved hockey, but because of an injury was unable to play the sport anymore. Pretty amazing huh? Your dad buys you a hockey team because you feel a bit down on yourself.
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What did it for me about this documentary is that it doesn't really focus on the crime aspect of things so much but instead talks a great deal about the Danbury Trashers hockey team, which as it turns out was specifically built to be an incredibly violent team. Everyone knows that there are fights in hockey, but this team sought to gain notoriety by being the most violent team they could possibly be. They faced tons of penalties because of this and they actually won games as well. There is no denying that they were intimidating as hell to their opponents and the fans absolutely loved it.
I don't think you have to be a hockey fan in order to appreciate this because there is a ton of actual footage of the violence at the games and it is pretty damn brutal to watch.
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They were built to win with violence and again, I don't know a great deal about hockey and never played it... i can't even skate, but I can appreciate someone building a team this way and it nearly worked for them even though they did not win the championship.
Should I watch it?
For a lot of people you might think that an interest in the sport of ice hockey is necessary in order to enjoy this and no, that is not the case. I don't think you need to even be familiar with anything about the sport because they don't focus on that to any sort of serious level. They do focus on the legacy of one of the most violent teams in the sport, ever, and also how there is speculation that the show The Sopranos may have been based on this real-life family. I really enjoyed it and I think others will also.
It dropped on Netflix in most regions on August 31st, 2021.
