Shot and also jailed 18 times, Goldie Goldthorpe was a true hockey character

Bill (Goldie) Goldthorpe’s doesn’t worry too much about what might have been.

The inspiration for the Ogie Ogilthorpe character in the iconic hockey film Slap Shot, the Hornepayne, Ont.-born Goldthorpe was originally slated to star in the role himself.

But it wasn’t meant to be.

His temper got in the way and he was turfed from the film.

For good reason, said the now 62-year-old former rough-and-tumble legendary on- and off-ice tough guy, in town on Friday for a fundraiser in support of the Lakehead Thunderwolves men’s hockey team.

“What happened is they thought I was a little too nuts for Paul Newman,” Goldthorpe said, referencing the movie’s star, the Oscar-winning actor who played Reg Dunlop, coach of the fictional Federal League’s perennial losing Charlestown Chiefs.

“To make a story short, I threw a pop bottle and Paul Newman’s brother was coming through the dressing room. The bottle broke over the top of his head, he got pop all over him and I didn’t get my part in the movie.”

The part instead went to Ned Dowd, a former professional player who also happened to be the brother of writer Nancy Dowd, who authored the Slap Shot script.

“At the time I think I was a little pissed off, but not now. Everybody knows Ogie Ogilthorpe is Goldie Goldthorpe. I appreciate more now than I did when they were filming the movie.”

Goldthorpe was a journeyman hockey player in every sense of the word during his playing days, which included 33 games over two seasons in the former World Hockey Association, where he scored one goal and collected 87 penalty minutes in 33 games.

The son of a Canadian National Railway engineer and nurse’s aide, Goldthorpe played junior in Thunder Bay and was dubbed the wildest, meanest, most unpredictable player in hockey.

A junior favourite in Thunder Bay, Goldthorpe’s professional career took him on a cross-country journey that began with the Syracuse Blazers of the North American Hockey League and finished with the American Hockey League’s Moncton Alpines in 1983-84.

In between he had turns in San Diego, Erie, Denver, Ottawa, Binghamton, Richmond, Toledo and Spokane, not to mention suiting up for the Thunder Bay Twins.

The stories live on in hockey lore, though read like an improbable film script. Or Slap Shot in real life, only rougher and tougher. 

Once he leapt out of the penalty box and bit a linesman on the leg. Another time, according to a 2002 Globe and Mail article that described him as an “impossibly Afro-haired hellion,” he stormed the ice in street clothes and starting beating up his team’s opponents.

He wound up in jail 18 times for his off-ice antics, alcohol fueling many of the fights that landed him behind bars. In San Diego in 1980 he was shot in the stomach trying to save an ex-girlfriend from a drug dealer.

But it’s his time playing junior hockey in Thunder Bay that stands out most in his hockey-playing memories, under the tutelage of Albert Cava.

“He taught us how to play and stand up for ourselves and act like young men. We probably had the best team in Canada at the time,” he said. “It just went from there. Playing in Thunder Bay was the exception,” he said.

Sadly, hockey no longer has room for players like himself, a product of a brawl-filled generation that spawned the Broad Street Bullies and turned them into Stanley Cup champions.

“It’s sad the way the game is going,” he said, calling for the red line to be reintroduced. “My part of the game is gone now. In a couple more years, there won’t be any more fighting.”