One of Paul Newman’s first movie roles was playing the boxer Rocky Graziano in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” His off-screen passion was auto racing — as a driver and a team owner. But, in my book, Newman’s key intersection with athletics was his lead role in the greatest sports movie of all time, the minor-league hockey comedy “Slap Shot.”

Newman’s character, Reggie Dunlop, is a player/coach for the Charlestown Chiefs, a losing team in a dying mill town. With the team about to fold, here come the Hanson brothers, a bizarre trio with horned-rim glasses who tape aluminum foil on their knuckles to aid in their inevitable on-ice brawls. Initially resistant to use the Hansons, Dunlop eventually decides to embrace goonery to save the franchise, much to the delight of fans.

I first saw the movie as an eighth-grader when it aired on network television. Fatefully, my gym class began a floor hockey unit the next day. As could happen in the days before 800 channels, every boy at school had watched the same TV program the night before, and the fact that the movie was satirizing violence was completely lost on our 14-year-old brains. As soon as the ball dropped at midcourt, it was disregarded. Ten separate stick fights broke out as our gym teacher disinterestedly read the sports page in the corner. Apparently nobody’s parents complained about all the welts, because this went on for a week, which is a strong statement about the hold the movie had on us — or that we just liked to hit each other with sticks.

I watched “Slap Shot” again over the summer, and the comedy still seemed fresh. Some guys just know how to swear, and Newman, who died at age 83 on Saturday, was one of them. He had a knack for playing flawed heroes, and his charisma was such that no man alive resented him, even if he looked better in his 70s than we did in our 20s.

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