The Beauce Jaros: That Other Team from Slap Shot

Hockey fans around the world know the team and characters from Slap Shot. They know that the Charlestown Chiefs were actually the Johnstown Jets, and the Federal League was based on the original NAHL. Lesser known, however, is the other NAHL team whose image was fictionalized for the film; the Beauce Jaros. The team lasted only one full season, but it was enough to earn them a legendary status in their hometown, and what could be called the role of “best supporting actor” in the greatest hockey film of all time. 

Every hero needs a villain. For the laughable, lovable Chiefs, it was the Syracuse Bulldogs and their murderer's row lineup. While Syracuse was a team in the NAHL at the time, their image as a band of outlaw tough guys was generated by the short-lived team from Quebec. The Jaros embodied so much of what writer Nancy Dowd was looking for to create the Bulldogs lineup, the production team simply took the Jaros uniforms and swapped out the name surrounding the logo.

Exactly who were the Jaros and how did they inspire these roles?

The Jaros were the creation of Quebec businessman Andre Veilleux, who desperately wanted to get into the world of professional hockey. With NHL and WHA options incredibly limited, he settled on the minor leagues, selling the NAHL on the idea of a regional rival to the Maine Nordiques. 

Veilleux wanted a team that would play the same style of game as the reigning NHL Champion Philadelphia Flyers, who were in the height of their Broad Street Bullies era. He got what he wanted, assembling a team that would dominate games, setting records on the scoreboard as well as the penalty sheet. It was that combination that made them the perfect image for the Bulldogs.

The Jaros didn’t have the police rap sheet that was created for the Bulldogs, but they cast a similar shadow over the league. There was no Ross "Mad Dog" Madison or Clarence "Screaming Buffalo" Swamptown, but there were players like Gilles “Bad News” Bilodeau who racked up almost 500 penalty minutes despite multiple suspensions and WHA calls-ups. Bilodeau was routinely joined in the bin by the likes of Jim Troy, John Van Horlick and a host of other Jaros each hovering around the 200 penalty minute mark.

In an era where bench clearing brawls weren’t out of the ordinary, Jaros' games often got out of hand and needed to have teams sent to the locker rooms for the officials to regain control. Several games got so out of hand that they needed to be postponed due to the number of penalties and ejections issued.

In addition to the fighting that was typical of that era, there were incidents at Jaros’ games that were far more serious. There was no “Denny Pratt tragedy,” but there was the cross checking incident that left Jacques Caron with a broken neck and a multi-Jaros attack that left Allan Globensky concussed and hospitalized.

There was also a November 26th road game when several Jaros players went into the stands to fight the local crowd. The police would arrive and arrest the players in the locker room resulting in some of them spending the night in jail. This event by itself was enough to earn the team the nickname and reputation as the outlaws of the league. Ironically, this road game was in…wait for it…Syracuse. 

While incidents like these had teams and newspapers from around the league calling for intervention against them, the Jaros weren’t just ruffians. They were also a highly talented team. Player-coach Jocelyn “Gypsie Joe” Hardy would become the first player in pro hockey to record a 200 point season, 6 years before Wayne Gretzky would do it in the NHL. Hardy was one of 4 Jaros to record 60+ goals that season. Defensively, Alain Carron was the league's premier penalty killer, with skating and stick handling skills that allowed him to control the puck in a game of one man keep-away while the power play clock ticked down. Steve Vallieres wrote in his book “Implacables” that Jaros’ wins were often so lopsided that fans in Saint-Georges began expressing boredom and questioning the legitimacy of the league

The Jaros would win the regular season title with a record of 54-18-2 and eliminate the Jets in the semi finals of the playoffs. Just as the Bulldogs would lose the championship in the movie, the Jaros would lose the championship in real life, bringing to an end to their only full season of existence. 

A combination of factors would lead to Veilleux folding the team the following December while the entire league was crumbling around them. The league itself would disband the following September.

In their brief existence, they sent players up to the WHA, established scoring records, set the stage for the future of hockey in Saint-Georges and, of course, inspired Hollywood's legendary bad boys. Slap Shot comedically highlighted the good, the bad and the ugly of the game, while making Johnstown a bit of a mecca for fans. Both the team and the town had plenty of great supporting actors, so here’s to one of the lesser known’s; the Beauce Jaros.