MovieChat Forums > The Mighty Ducks (1992) Discussion > deeper meaning of the bombay/reilly 'feu...

deeper meaning of the bombay/reilly 'feud'

posted 12 years ago by kobrickmamba
5 replies | jump to latest

maybe im reading too much into this but heres how i see it.

on the surface: reilly resents him because he cost him the championship in the early 70s.

reality: reilly was a hockey obsessed guy with little or no other life. we can assume he was a meaningless real world job (and hes not a only a pee wee coach) who wanted to be good at hockey more then anything and bombay had a ton of talented which he saw wasted, he even said something about banks not being as good as bombay but wanting it more.

bombay uses his "talent" to become a big shot lawyer (reilly would likely have known this since he was probably in the newspapers fairly often) and ended up being successful in life anyways just not as a pro hockey player, i really think this burned reilly just as much as bombay costing him the game.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] landry_john 11 years ago

Coach Reilly's conclusion that Gordon Bombay alone costed the Hawks the championship that only year they didn't win was rather harsh & created an environment amongst the team that finger pointing in defeat was acceptable.Hockey always was and always will be a team game.

[–] aqib4 11 years ago

When you think about the fact that they won titles pretty much every year after that, they had enough talent that you can't blame one kid.

Also the fact that he put it on a kid whose father had just died makes Reilly a horrible human being. It did set up the contrast when Bombay was in the same spot with Conway.

[–] smokeydspray 10 years ago

You read way to much into it lmao

[–] daveyh (641) 2 years ago

Don't forget that when Reilly and Gordon first meet as adults, Reilly's the one who actually approaches Gordon, shakes his hand, initiates the conversation etc
OK, the Hawks run up the score on the District 5 that day, but that's what they've been doing since Gordon's time (you even see Gordon mouthing along to the "win big" mantra). The Hawks don't exactly play nice, and Reilly's s**t-eating grin at Gordon as the defeat gets more humiliating isn't really called for, but Gordon would have been one of the kids dishing out the pummelling back in his pee-wee days and no doubt enjoying it.
You can argue that some of Reilly's compliments were back-handed -eg "he wants it more"- but he was still acknowledging that Gordon had more ability than the Hawk's current best player. His comment about how he wishes they'd taken the runners-up banner down also seems like a dig at Gordon, but maybe Reilly was just addressing the elephant in the room because they were both looking at the banner. He certainly doesn't seem to show any resentment towards Gordon over it anymore. If anything he seems to be the one trying to bury the hatchet.
It's only later in the movie when Gordon takes Adam Banks on a technicality and refuses to back down that Reilly really seems to turn on him.
From Reilly's point of view, he'd consider this "playing dirty" from Gordon, and the fact that he's willing to lose his job over it would, to Reilly, look like Gordon's hell-bent on sticking it to him. And to be fair, he kinda is.