The Mighty Ducks Return to the Rink on TV

A beloved family tale takes to the ice in a Disney+ reboot

A beloved family tale takes to the ice in a Disney+ reboot

Nearly 30 years since they first took the ice, the Mighty Ducks are back with a fresh roster and a familiar face guiding them.

The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, a 10-episode dramedy that begins streaming Friday, March 26th, returns to Minnesota, where the titular youth hockey team has evolved from scrappy underdogs into a powerhouse, which has made them more selective about the players they take on.

One kid who didn’t make the cut is 12-year-old Evan (Brady Noon, Good Boys). With the help of his doting mother Alex (Lauren Graham, Gilmore Girls), the boy sets out to organize his own team of misfits and challenge the win-at-all-costs mentality of contemporary youth sports. Assisted by former Ducks coach Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez, reprising his role from the three previous Ducks films), they set out to rediscover the joys of playing simply for love of the game.

Estevez, who is also an executive producer here, returns to the screen after spending the better part of the past 25 years as a filmmaker. He says the character of Bombay, which he originated in 1992, was always one of his favourites and this new series’ premise of him as an embittered ex-college coach now running a public ice rink offered intriguing possibilities.

“He’s sort of hiding out,” Estevez explains. “He’s eating leftover birthday cakes from kids’ parties and leftover pizza. He’s completely disengaged from the world, which is very unlike the Bombay that we saw the last time we saw him in D3. And so for me it was a shift because if you look at the franchise, my character was always very engaged with the kids and always… being the coach that we all wished we’d had. And so now there I am hiding out.

“So over the course of the show, obviously he comes out of his shell. We see him getting re-engaged thanks to not only the kids training there but also through Lauren’s character drawing him out, drawing some truth out of him, drawing him out of his shell. So, for me, it was an adjustment to play a guy that was hiding out, but I think it works.”

As for Graham, she very much was attracted to the show’s exploration of whether it’s more important to win or just have some fun.

“I am the ‘Get out there and have fun’ [mindset], 100 per cent,” the Gilmore Girls alum explains. “One of the themes that really struck me about this show is just kindness and inclusivity and joy. Like, where is the joy? You know, is winning, in itself, the only thing that brings happiness? That’s something we’re looking at.”

The Mighty Ducks: Game Changer streams Fridays on Disney+