Several National Hockey League players have supporting roles or cameos: Mike Ricci, Vincent Lecavalier, Stéphane Quintal, Sean Avery, Ian Laperrière, Pascal Dupuis, and Philippe Sauvé.
Roy Dupuis has played the part of Maurice Richard three times. First in'Heritage Minutes (1991)' - a series of short sixty-second films depicting events or characters from Canadian history- and later in 'Maurice Richard: Histoire d'un Canadien'
Vincent Lecavalier, who plays Canadiens legend Jean Béliveau, won the Maurice "Rocket" Richard Trophy for leading the NHL in goals scored during the 2006-07 season.
All of the NHL game scenes were filmed at the Colisée Pepsi in Quebec City, as the Montreal Forum was converted to retail space after closing in 1996 and the other arenas depicted in the film were demolished by the time filming commenced. The Colisée was home to the Quebec Nordiques, which played in the World Hockey Association (1972-1979) and the NHL (1972-1995). Maurice Richard himself briefly coached the Nordiques during their inaugural WHA season.
With the movie being about the real-life Maurice Richard, a much beloved figure in French Canada, the movie did extremely well in Quebec. This encouraged distributor Alliance-Atlantis to try and release the movie in English Canada. Alliance-Atlantis released the movie to over 100 theaters in English Canada with a hefty $1.5 million marketing budget. However, the movie did very disappointing business there, not even getting close to recouping the English Canada marketing budget.