`SLAPSHOT' REMAINS A HOCKEY CLASSIC.

Byline: Jarre Fees

Ken Dryden, the great former Montreal Canadiens goaltender and now general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs, once wrote that baseball is what we want life to be, all full of fresh starts and time for a seventh-inning stretch. Hockey is more like what life really is. It's messy and jagged, with no smooth edges. It's ``Slap Shot.''

Of all the famous sports movies, from ``Rocky'' to ``Bull Durham'' to ``Field of Dreams,'' none has affected the perception of a sport like ``Slap Shot,'' which turned 20 last week.

``Slap Shot'' is not for the squeamish. It's not for those seeking family entertainment, unless your family is well-past PG-13. It's for those who know Wayne Gretzky is an oddity, a freak of athletic nature, a master of the purer elements. ``Slap Shot'' doesn't ignore the violence of the sport. It struggles with, rejects and finally embraces it. There's hockey, and then there's Hockey.

Paul Newman was already too old to play the role when he signed on as Reggie Dunlop, the aging player-coach of a losing team in the quasi-ficticious steel town of Charlestown, Pa.

His forward-thinking wife has left him, he's too old to play anymore, he's a terrible coach and his GM (Strother Martin, in the role of a career) is selling the team's equipment.

His best buddy on the team is Michael Ontkean, playing a bored Princeton grad with an alcoholic wife on the verge of a breakdown. The other wives are trapped between dependence and feminism, holding on to nothing and wondering if they've slipped. Sound like a comedy? It's a dark, edgy, vulgar, astonishing movie that wears a '70s patina and firmly, subtly transcends its own subject matter.

Writer Nancy Dowd and director George Roy Hill coax us into the bleak, desperate lives of a bunch of no-talent hockey players living in a dying town. Not funny enough yet? OK, the team is folding. Bring on the Hanson Brothers.

Yes, the Hanson brothers, they of the foil-taped fingers and the Coke-bottle glasses. Juvenile? Yes. Single-minded? Definitely. Mean-spirited? Well . . . they're nicer than Beavis and Butthead. And a generation later, they remain heroes to hard-core hockey fans.

The brothers love their team, they love the game. They also know what any goon in hockey knows: If you can't play, you'd better be able to fight.

And when coach Dunlop tells them - in a moment of naked clarity - that the team is history and he wants to go out with a little dignity (``Old-time hockey: Eddie Shore, Toe Blake'') they're the first to agree - and the first to get pummeled into dog food by the opposing team. Until Dunlop is reminded of what hockey-franchise owners have known all along. ``Show me the money'' is a new catch phrase for an old, old philosophy: Sports is entertainment, violence sells. And if the Hansons fight a little more than is absolutely necessary, at least they don't bite off anyone's ear.

HOLLYWOOD ON ICE

A look at other hockey movies:

``The Game That Kills'': Earliest known hockey movie. Starring Rita Hayworth (Col. Pictures, 1937).

``The Cutting Edge'': Ex-hockey player teams with figure skater for Olympics.

``Youngblood'': Rob Lowe as a small-time hockey player in love with coach's daughter.

``The Deadliest Season'': Made for TV. Not bad for a hockey movie, and Meryl Streep's screen debut.

``Mighty Ducks'' I and II: OK, could be worse - actually, the sequel achieved this.

``Sudden Death'': ``Die Hard'' on ice - it did.

``Happy Gilmour'': Would-be player Adam Sandler can't skate, winds up on pro golf circuit.

CAPTION(S):

Photo; Box

PHOTO Paul Newman plays an aging hockey player in ``Slap Shot,'' one of the best hockey movies ever produced.

Universal Pictures

BOX: HOLLYWOOD ON ICE (see text)