prompter: Can you explain the 2022-2023 Vex IQ game "Slapshot"?
assistant: Slap Shot is a 1977 American sports comedy film directed by George Roy Hill, written by Nancy Dowd and starring Paul Newman and Michael Ontkean. It depicts a minor league ice hockey team that resorts to violent play to gain popularity in a declining factory town.

Dowd based much of her script, as well as several of the characters, on her brother Ned Dowd's playing experiences on 1970s minor league professional hockey teams.

While Slap Shot received mixed reviews upon release and was only a moderate box office success, it has since become widely regarded as a cult film.

Plot
In the fictional small town of Charlestown, Pennsylvania, the local steel mill is about to close permanently and lay off 10,000 workers, indirectly threatening the existence of the town's minor league hockey team, the Charlestown Chiefs, who are also struggling with a losing season and an increasingly hostile crowd. After discovering the hometown fans responding positively to an on-ice brawl with the opposing goalie, player-coach Reggie Dunlop goads his own team into a violent style of play, eventually letting the overly-aggressive Hanson Brothers, the club's recent acquisitions, loose on their opponents. The brothers' actively violent and thuggish style of play excites the fans, which increases revenue, potentially saving the team.

The team's new style produces unintended consequences that affect not only Dunlop, but the Chiefs' star player, Ned Braden, along with the rest of the team. Braden refuses to take part in the violent antics, as Dunlop attempts to exploit Braden's marital troubles in his efforts to get him to take part in the team's brawling, but to no avail. Several games degenerate into bench-clearing brawls, including one that takes place before the opening face-off, and another that brings the local police into the locker room to arrest the Hanson Brothers after they attack the opposing fans in the stands. Nonetheless, the Chiefs rise up the ranks to become contenders for the championship, and a rumor (started by Dunlop himself to further motivate his teammates) spreads that the team's success could possibly lead them to be sold to a buyer in Florida.

Eventually Dunlop meets team owner Anita McCambridge, and discovers his efforts to increase the team's popularity (and value) through violence have been for naught, as McCambridge's better option is to fold the team as a tax write-off. By the time Dunlop decides to abandon the new strategy of violence over skill, the Chiefs' main rivals in Syracuse have already upped the ante by stocking their team full of violent "goons" (many of whom were previously suspended from the league for flagrant violations) in preparation for the league's championship game. After being crushed during the first period while playing a non-violent style of "old time hockey," the disgusted general manager tells them that various National Hockey League scouts accepted his invitation to the game, as he was hoping that the Chiefs' habitual escapades would get the players signed to the major leagues.

Upon hearing this news, Dunlop decides to have his team revert to their previous violent approach, much to the joy of the spectators. When Braden witnesses his now-estranged wife cheering for the Chiefs, he realizes the absurdity of the violence, and adopts a similarly radical (but still non-violent) way of participation by performing a live striptease on the rink amid rousing cheers. When the Syracuse team's captain protests against this "obscene" demonstration and hits the referee for dismissing him, Syracuse is disqualified, granting the Chiefs the championship. After their win, and with the Chiefs now effectively folded and finished, Dunlop accepts the offer to be the player-coach to the Minnesota Nighthawks, bringing his teammates with him.