The Road to 3-Peat doco is getting close. Pre-order it. You won’t regret your decision.

(Try saying that headline, five times and fast)

I had one of the cooler phone calls I’ve had in a while last week. It was Jason McFadyen, one of the creators of the “The Ice – Road to 3-Peat” documentary … a 24/7-style fly-on-the-wall doco about the Melbourne Ice’s campaign for an unlikely third championship in a row. Jason and Shannon Swan spent the entire season following the Ice around Australia, to training, to team meetings, to the players’ outside-hockey lives, you name it.

Jason asked me to have a look at the script before they went to final voiceover, and so I spent AFL Grand Final weekend mostly getting a sneak preview of the six part doco.

No spoilers, but holy crap. You want to watch this series. It’s amazing on so many fronts.

And I would say (*and this is a totally unpaid, unsolicited, purely personal view), I would recommend buying the DVD set, ahead of waiting for Fox Sports to show its broadcast-friendly version. My understanding is that Fox Sport will be beeping out the unsavoury language, of which it may surprise you to know there is quite a bit behind the closed doors of a hockey team. The DVD version will be a “cleanskin”, no making it family friendly.

You want to see that version. (I always grit my teeth when 24/7 blanks out swearing, as well … I mean, come on. It’s hockey.)

Plus, if you buy the DVDs, the Resolution Media guys get some kind of return on months and months of work and commitment.  In my former life as a sports writer, I covered a lot of international sport, hung out in lots of sporting team change rooms, but some of the footage Jason and Shannon managed to capture is like nothing I’ve seen before.

Here’s a link to pre-order the series. Like I said, and to emphasise, I’m not on commission and have received no payment from these guys.  … I helped out the script thing as a favour and because I was excited to be able to see a rough cut of the series after hearing about it for so long.

I love what they’ve done and seeing the close to final edit was brilliant. Thanks, Jason and Shannon.

Hockey fans, either in Melbourne or lock-out starved American fans … this is a cracker of a hockey fix. Get on it.