A few things wrong, but a solid movie.

Rating: 6/10 (23 March 2012)

Just watched this last night. I can say that it wasn't a great movie but I wasn't mad I watched it. I am not going to run through the entire plot just mention some things, positive and negative, that stood out to me.
Positives:
I really like Liev Schreiber's character. The movie didn't fall into the cliché of making him the asshole antagonist. The movie played its card early letting us guess that an eventual clash would occur between Glatt (Sean William Scott) and Rhea(Liev Schreiber). It did a good job with their path's to the final confrontation. I found it more believable than most movies.
It used a lot of the typical sport movie clichés, but handled them well. The team had to win the final game to make it to the playoffs, and the team broken in the beginning but coming together in the end. It did them well by underselling these and making them almost minor subplots. I was worried the culmination of the film would be Glatt scoring the winning goal like a typical sports movie, but I was impressed that the climax was the one-on-one duel between Glatt and Rhea. The team winning became somewhat of a loose end they tied up in last few seconds, which I thought was refreshing.
There were a few solid moments of comedy and not just poor slapstick jokes or dirty humor as you would expect from a Sean William Scott movie. The part that comes to mind is the teams captain (Richard Clarkin) trying to motivate the team by relating the impending match and the other team to his divorce.
The movie is short and moves at a great pace. Running time 92 minutes and though I wasn't always laughing, I was never bored.
Negatives:
Sean William Scott and Jay Baruchel. In the movie, Scott plays the unintelligent Glatt. He came off as unbelievably dumb. I think the writers (Baruchel is one of them) wanted to go for a likable simple minded man, trying for a Forest Gump type character. The problem is they made the dialog too dumb and it was grating.
It was nowhere close to the horribleness of Baruchel's character. Ryan is the foul mouthed blogger and possibly TV host. The movie doesn't explain much about Ryan, he is just in the movie to record a video of Glatt that lands him a tryout. Baruchel has a horrible Boston accent and has the worst foul jokes. Thankfully it would seem that he only plays a small part in the beginning, but of course returns for the final act.
I am curious to the handling of Glatt's family played by Eugene Levy (dad), Ellen David (mom), and David Paetkau (homosexual brother). The start of the movie seems to allude that the relationship between Glatt, his father, and his brother will play a major role in the plot, yet it is only addressed in a few very short scenes with not resolution.
Glatt and his father have the typical, "I disapprove of your career" relationship. It comes up once at a dinner after Glatt has established himself as somewhat of a star for the team, where his father demonstrates his disgust by leaving dinner abruptly. This is I suppose resolved by his dad showing up to the final game and cheering. I am being a bit of a hypocrite in complaining about this, yet applauding the movie for not traveling to far down the typical sports movie clichés. The fact that the movie took the time to establish the family, but never really used them bothered me a bit.
The brother being homosexual seemed to be another plot piece that was established early, but really only served to be motivation for Glatt to fight in the beginning of the movie, as a result of a hockey player making a general comment about homosexuality. There was a funny moment at the start of the movie of the family coming out of the synagogue where Eugene Levy is trying to explain to a friend that Paetkau is only friends with a random guy, until they hug and kiss.
I also didn't care about the relationship between Glatt and Eva (Alison Pill). It was neither good or bad, it was forgettable. I didn't think it added to the movie.
Conclusion:
Don't take the 6/10 as a poor review. The movie was average because of some poor dialog, characters, and general mistakes. I am not mad I took the time to watch it though. It is short, well paced, and I was able to overlook all the mistakes and still pull for the hero. The final fight was very well done. It had a great lead-up and made for a solid ending. It just had a few many flaws to push it too a great movie.