Anyone going to check this out? Hockey players and the women who love them

Premiering on SoapNet June 19th I believe

I'm leaning towards checking it out, but I don't have much hope. These are the people who gave us GH: Night Shift, so....

I don't have much hope either but I'm a hockey fan so I want to at least give it a chance. ;)

They got maybe 2 episodes shown in Canada on the CBC before it was canceled.

I'm watching just because of a print ad I saw of, I guess, the male lead in just a pair of boxer briefs.

Here's a Variety review of MVP (not bad, nothing earth-shattering either).MVP Review A N.Y. Daily News review said it was nothing you haven't seen before. BTW, in Canada, it lasted only 1 season before being axed due to low ratings. Don't get used to it.

I was lucky enough to see MVP when it aired on CBC. Being close to the Canadian border has its perks sometimes. If you take the show for what it is - a cheesy, soap opera that has little to do with actual hockey playing - you'll be fine. However, the show does push the stereotype of hockey player-as-manwhore pretty hard.

I'm most intrigued at how Soapnet is going to edit the show from the original airings, since the show had quite the potty mouth.

And from what I had read, the show did pretty well in Canada amongst younger viewers, but was canceled by the CBC due to revenue losses from the Toronto Maple Leafs not making the playoffs. Just another way the Leafs muck things up for the rest of us.

They lost me with "game on" and red armbands. I'm all for stupid hot Hockey players, even Canadians, but it got too cheesy too fast.

Oh my as a huge hockey fan (Pittsburgh Penguins) this show offended me last night.

It was dead on, on some things and yet so far off on some.

The funeral at center ice about killed me!

I'll watch for the amusement.

Major hockey fan here (Washington Capitals, hence the screen name). I was anticipating great soapy hockey goodness and I hated, hated this show. I thought Canadians would get the hockey storylines right but they could not have been more wrong:

• The draft took place right before opening night?
• A rookie making $5 million? I thought this was the NHL.
• Asking another player (the captain) to take a pay cut to pay a rookie?
• A 41-year-old captain? I thought they said Mustangs, not Red Wings.
• A GM turning his back on a player's widow?
• Players' wives hanging out with team management in a suite?
• Players snorting coke?
• A dead player's body being carried to center ice and lying in state so fans could pay their respects? Was this Gordie Howe? Gretzky?

I could go on and on. It would have been easy to get at least the draft and rookie salary storylines right. Not to mention, if a viewer is not a hockey fan, this show depicts hockey players and management as total assholes -- which really pisses me off. I used to work for my beloved Caps and each member of the organization was a fine individual and good citizens of the community. Sure, over the years there have been examples of NHL players committing questionable acts, but those are very few and far between.

The acting also stunk to high heaven and the storylines were beyond clunky. I was really disappointed, and I have zero interest in watching this dreck again. Oh, Canada. <<<shakes head>>>

SOAPnet will rerun the first episode over the next few days (I think they're running it twice today, for instance). I'm morbidly curious about how much of a trainwreck it is, but I admit my hockey-fu is weak...

It's probably best for us non-hockey fans. I just watched this after 90210 as I ate breakfast this morning (yes, my Saturday morning ritual). I fully expected to change the channel after two minutes but stayed the whole hour for the hot, hot hockey players. It's cheesy, over-the-top, and ridiculous, but did I mention the hot, hot hockey players? (Also: the best friend from Instant Star as a hot chick!)

This was one of the most trashily inane pieces of entertainment I have seen in years. I'm going to watch every episode.

I lasted until they carried the dead hockey superstar onto the court and gave all the fans the opportunity to pay their respects for the family.

I mean okay the guy was a hockey star and a public memorial service isn't out of the realm of possibility but allowing all the fans onto the ice to interact with the family? Not in a million years, not even on a cheesy soap.

Check please!

Oh good! My dvr didn't record it for some reason. Thanks for the info.

So over the top! So fantastically cheesy! I was laughing so hard when they folded the hockey jersey to hand to the dead player's family that I had to call a friend to tell her about it! This is so bad, so filled with cliches, that I *have* to keep watching!

So bad it's awesome! Though I would think a series created in Canada would get the hockey stuff right. And yowza, but Peter Miller is smoking hot. The guy that plays Gabe looks eerily like Peter Karuse.

Peter Miller IS smoking hot. Yowza is right.

Only one season...how many actors will be familiar from Stargate and other productions, should I start a countdown to Kenneth Welsh (I was amazed it took until series 3 of Slings & Arrows) or Maury Chaykin?

This show is fabulous!! It's so completely horrible. I love it. The "funeral on ice" (cannot believe I just typed that!) was laugh out loud hysterical. The bitch daughter, the virgin, the hick girlfriend w/a trailer (she has to have a trailer!). I was reading some of the episode descriptions on tv.com. It seems to get so much better (or worse, LOL).

At last, a soap with lots of shirtless men. I don't care how bad it is. It has shirtless men.

From what I saw, it was trashy fun, but I'd rather see Footballer's Wives which is unabashedly trashy; this show was trashy lite

OK, so I'm watching this for, like, the third time tonight. And I'm still missing something. The first scene with Connie and Gabe, when she's sitting with her sisters at the table and he's getting coffee then goes over to their table - was that the first time they met? It seems like they had met before, but after a few viewings, I'm still not getting it.

And for such an exotic looking man, Peter Miller is such an All American name. It makes it difficult when searching for photos of him. Yes, I've been wasting time googling him - why do you ask?

I also really like the theme song. Is that a regular song that they used or was it created for this show?

Oh man...Damon can add me to his "collection" any day! *blush*



It IS pretty bad. But, I keep getting distracted by the hotness. I guess I'm going to keep on watching.

ScarletPrincess - I was under the impression that he overheard her sisters giving her a hard time about men/dating and came over to pretend to be a guy she was dating in order to shut them up. Not sure, but that was my interpretation.

I was too busy hating on the blatant inaccuracies and offensive depiction of NHL players/management to look at the actors objectively. But I recall thinking that only the rookie was hot to me. The other two were just meh IMO and the new captain/"nice guy" looked too small to be a hockey player. There are some way hotter real-life hockey players (Rick DiPietro is my personal favorite).

This show is awful. We just need a hockey player in the closet and every cliche is complete. The acting is baaaad and the stories make little sense, but it is full of eye candy so I'll be watching.

Footballer's Wives on Ice, for sure! I was surprised they got so much hockey stuff wrong, but I'm willing to overlook that if they keep bringing the hot guys without shirts. And Spirit in the Sky? OMG, I can't wait for the next episode!!

In a tiny voice... I liked it (for what it is - mindless fluff on SoapNet!)

Did people really think this show was actually going to be about hockey? It has as much to do with hockey as Footballers' Wives had to do with soccer - that is to say nothing, except to provide a setting in which to display hunky rich men and the women who lust after them. It would have been nice to get some inside scoop on the real life business and playing aspects of hockey, but c'mon - this is on SoapNet, not ESPN.

The men on the show were sexy, but I agree that in real life, player-for-player, hockey has the hottest guys of any sport (YMMV). It would be fun if they could get some cameos with some real life players (past or present - I'm not particular!)

I don't remember any of the characters' names, so bear with me. I, too, thought that the initial meeting between Owner's Son and Virgin was hard to follow. But he sure had an easy time finding her and her house and following her around. Kind of scary.

Also, were the Virgin's sisters the biggest bitches you'd ever want to meet? Except for the one scene where the one tells her to go to the bar to meet the Owner's Son, they seemed ice cold!

And is the Widow going to turn into the show's Tanya Turner (from FW)? She seemed pleasant enough in the first episode, but she was dealt some pretty hard knocks that could turn her into a rabid monster. At least I hope so...

Man, this show is bad. Therefore, I, too, will be glued to it.

nonnybaby, no, I wasn't expecting it to be about hockey, but I do think that some of the dumb factual inaccuracies could've been avoided. Some of them didn't seem to NEED to be that way for story reasons, you know? I don't mind people taking liberties, but when they take DUMB liberties for no good reason, then I'm irritated.

I did hear a rumor somewhere that the show got cancelled in Canada already, though, after just the first seson -- is that true? If so, I wonder when that happened, and if SoapNet knew that when they bought these episodes. Or if they are trying to give it a second chance at life.

Yep, this show will be a winner. Friday nights rating .06. I didn't think Nielson could record something that low.

I'm in the "so bad, it's good" camp. Mostly because I didn't expect it to be closely related to reality, and because I love how all Canadian shows look slightly, well, low-rent, compared to our glossy, air-brushed versions. I mean that in a good way, like the men and women look (in face and figure) like people you might actually see on the street. The clothes, though... the men look fine (FINE) but the women look about ten years behind. What gives? Toronto is a pretty stylish city -- the stylists on this show can do better.

As for the Captain meeting the Virgin -- I think he thought she was cute right off the bat, so was paying attention to the conversation and decided to play with/save her. And, yes, showing up at the pre-school and house was stalkerish. But, as in real life, it's not so creepy if he's dead-sexy and you like him.

This show also reminds me of Mile High, a British trashy prime time soap about an airline which I lurved! LOL! That show was crack. I was crushed when Tom Wisdom (Marco) left. The show later was cancelled and BBCA didn't show the remaining episodes.

Although, the captain/owner son and the virgin story was confusing, I liked it the best. They both seem like sweet people who are out of their depths in their lives.

I believe the captain is the son of the coach, not the owner.

Simone, I loved Mile High too and BBCA did show all the remaining episodes, they just spaced them badly but I remembering seeing the S2 finale on BBCA (and it wasn't all that uplifting).


MVP is over the top and silly but I will stay for the eye candy. Totally Footballers Wives on ice. That funeral at center ice was crazy.

I laughed out loud at "Spirit in the Sky" being played in the arena for the captain's funeral. That's klassy.

Did the CBC think that this show would be the fictionalized tv series equivalent to Footballer$ Wive$? There's no Hockey version of Tanya Turner? The male manager of the hockey team, would have been eaten ALIVE by Hazel and it was just BLAH.

Thumbs Down.

Yet, I have to say that the young rookie hockey player DOES fill out his briefs. VERY NICE. Yummy. Other than that, it was just BLAH.

ScarletPrincess, thanks for the clarification. I clearly missed that one.


So I did miss the final episodes. I did read the summaries online and they sounded depressing as hell. It was wrong to break up Dan and Leanne and then kill her off. Did you know that Tom Wisdom was in 300 and will be in the Sisters of the Travelling Pants 2? Yummy.

Yes, according to a review I read, it was cancelled after one season which leads me to ponder...what would happen if the show was a hit in U.S.? Would Soapnet bring it back?

BTW, as a first time viewer of Soapnet, why is their name so fucking large in the right hand corner?



LMAO! I can see the similarities in the two shows but as a Footballer$ Wive$ junkie (still waiting on Season 4 DVDs BTW), there was not comparision. Where was the foul language, the sex, and especially the naked men? I have seen more skin on The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency than what I saw in the pilot.

But I will definitely watch it again....:)

It was done badly but they did air all of Mile High, which I honestly liked more than Footballers Wives. YMMV.. I think I had my DVR set to tape all episodes and when they were randomly aired, that's how I caught them. And don't even gt me started on the Dan/Leanne situation. That was a couple that singed my TV screen with their chemistry.
I did know about TW in those movies. Yay.


Back to MVP, the rookie is hot, but Peter Miller is all kinds of scrumptious. I am looking forward to episode 2 to see how wacky this show will be. I am not impressed with any of the female characters though I did recognize the Black actress as Kat from Instant Star.

So that is why she looked so familar. I thought she was one of the players girlfriends/wives so why was she in bed with the character played by Peter Miller?

Because he sleeps with any and every woman who crosses his path. He leered his way through the party and the funeral.

I'm watching this again - what? There's very little on during the summer, especially on Mondays. Anyway, does anyone think that the key that Adam gave his daughter that he called "insurance" is the key to a safety deposit box that either has a stash of cash or blackmail material on the owner that will allow the widow and daughter to get their money back?

This was one of the many, many things that I was confused about as well. Whose wife is she? Is there a black player on the team? Not that she has to be married to a black player, but I hope there is at least one because that is one of the ingredients I found to be missing from the formulaic-ness of this show. And if he could be black and on the down-low that would be even better. (I am, of course, kidding, but that seems like the kind of trite plotline that would be included in this show).

Regarding the comparison to Footballers' Wives:



If I'm remembering correctly (and it's been a while), Hazel wasn't on FW at the very beginning. Didn't she enter the fray at the end of the first season/beginning of the second season? I remember Hazel as being one of the characters that came along when things were getting a little slow and the introduction of her character really shook things up.

Anyway, I heartily agree with your point that something this show could really use is some women with some big brassy balls!

The New Yorker (yes! The New Yorker) has a short, positive review.

JB44 - I'm not sure we're going to get the langugage, sex, the naked men, and/or the outrageous fashion/makeup sense looks in this show. I'm really saddened by that thought.



Nonnybaby - I can't recall when Hazel came on the scene of FW, but she was fabulous. Between her, Tonya and that crazy bitch Amber, the show had lots of fabulous women with big and brassy ones.

It's great that MVP has female characters, that are 'normal/everyday looking', sweet and nice, but we also need to have some outrageously tacky, greedy and manipulative wives as well.

There has to be some balance.

I'm hoping that's what is going to happen. Hopefully they'll have enough money to buy the team and stick it to those who wouldn't help them in their time of need.

One thing I'm wondering about is the one woman was introduced as Stewie's new wife. Did we ever see Stewie?

It's a bit lame, and doesn't hold a candle to Footballer$ Wive$, but they use a Sloan song for the theme song. So, they got me! Mmmm, Sloan.

Am I the only one that watched episode 2 last night?

While I think Damon is a pig (though a smokin' hot, sexy as hell one - sriously, that man is foine), I'm glad he didn't get convicted. You can't tell me that his defense team couldn't find several other people that go to the Blue Line that saw her there several times all over him (among others). Not to mention at the McBride mansion season kick-off party where she was waitress. And I do not believe for a moment that girl is 20.

Speaking of the McBride mansion, are we to believe that they also had a fancy shmancy apartment in the city (that Trevor wound up moving in to), or did that belong to the daughter? I thought that was confusing.

I really began to like Gabe and Connie's story tonight, though really - what was she thinking going to court. And of course Gabe was the third in Damon's three-way. I was wondering how far they were going to go with the dialogue during that testimony.

Does anyone else thinks it's odd that Damon would be into a guy-girl-guy three-way instead of a girl-guy-girl one? I'm sure he could have found another girl.

Anyway, as to the nudity issue, I think it was pretty racy in Canada, but Soapnet has cut the swearing and nudity to protect the innocent American audience.

I forgot the show was on last night. Maybe Damon wanted to accidently "cross swords." Why the hell would SoapNet cut the nudity? It is cable for goodness sake.

Did they show the videotape?